When I set out to create the Summer Writing Project, I wanted to create something that parents and kids could join together and tell a story. I had no clue how many people would actively keep up with these episodes and how many projects would be written in real time as I send out these lessons.

As of early July 2025, we crossed over 1,000 podcast downloads (mostly on Apple Podcasts, but it is available on Spotify and directly through Substack as well), and I'm encouraged that people are listening to and reading these lessons and hopefully participating in the activities.

If you're joining me in real time, I'm immensely grateful and I'm trying to knock out 2-3 lessons per week and staying on top of this.

But you might have noticed we only had one lesson last week, and this past weekend's lesson came out on a Monday.

For that, I am sorry, but I also have an explanation.

A missed opportunity.

I had made an agreement with myself that Fictionsmith Family wouldn't keep happening if I wound up letting it take up the time that I usually spend with my family. That would kind of make me a hypocrite, telling people how to creatively connect with their children while I ignored my own kids.

Early on, during the Prologue, I lapsed on that once.

I had fallen behind on recording an episode I had written, and my wife took the kids to the pool and asked if I was coming along.

I took it as an opportunity to have a quiet house so I could record without interruption, and then as I hit publish, I thought about my family making memories at the pool without me and the strain I was adding to my wife with managing the kids in a fairly chaotic environment so I could talk about spending time with your kids.

It felt gross.

I don't plan to let it happen again, and so far it hasn't.

Summers can be busy

All that to say, summer can be a pretty hectic time in general when you have kids. Summer camps, birthday parties, sports, family vacations... the idea of sticking to somewhere around 50 lessons here and adhering to them in real time felt like it probably won't be the case for the majority of people who follow along.

Also, for those of you who live in a place where the idea of taking a noticing walk means squinting through sweat and wondering why someone would subject you to the heat... I'm sorry. There are definitely alternatives to these exercises, and with this being my first time sharing these ideas with the public, there are going to be some growing pains and revisions going forward.

Finding time to write together

Staying consistent is important to any writing project. Or at least making sure that you aren't letting long gaps creep in to the point that when you pick the story back up you're struggling to remember the names of minor characters or forgetting important details.

But if there are busy periods and you have to take a break, give yourself grace. Goodness knows on the third book of the Invisible House series called The Lost Saint, it took such a long gap that we had to re-read the first two books in the series before returning to the last half of the manuscript.

I find what helps me is putting something down on my calendar daily as a reminder, and often I still have to initiate the time to work on the story together.

Car trips are also helpful when it's just me and the kiddo I'm writing the book with because I can ask questions about what they think should happen next, or ask what they're going through in real life and then follow up by asking how they think the character we are writing would handle that situation.

Overall, this is a time we get to spend together talking about life and story together. And because story is one of the ways we make sense out of life, conversations inevitably veer over in that direction until we're talking about what is on their mind, and ultimately the story we write is the secondary byproduct.

This episode I know feels a little bit like it's taking a rabbit trail regarding writing a book, but if you've gotten this far and you have an outline of a story, my encouragement is to not give up and to understand that sometimes life gets busy and it's okay to take a pause if you need to.

I'll do my best to stay consistent, and the beautiful thing about having this all in Substack and Podcast format is that through the magic of time travel, you can read or listen to this any time you want as long as it is available.

One more thing about figuring out when to make the most of your time... ask yourself and your co-writer when you feel the most productive and creative. Some people like to be fresh in the morning, while others might like to wind their day down and then sit with a night light and put their story into words.

How to team up

It may also be a situation where the two of you prefer to divide and conquer, or you have a creative meeting, then one of you goes off and drafts and you come back together to give feedback and talk about where the story is going next.

Once you figure out when it makes the most sense to write together, put it in your calendar, or write it on a sticky note so neither of you forget.

It can be easy to let time slip away, but if you're intentional enough to be following along with this process, then I think you can make it work.

One last thing

I understand this is a lot longer of a process than most kids would undertake, and interest in this may ebb and flow. We've had more than one writing project in our family kind of fade away, and I've always given my kids an opportunity to be honest with me if they decide they are done. I really don't want them to look back on the time we spend together and feel like it's only because I forced them into participating.

I hope this is helpful, and thank you to everyone who has reached out so far and commented, emailed, and texted me about being a part of this process.

Until next time!

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