let's make August the month of Little Projects
a little variation on our usual monthly intentions plus a 🎉Goodreads giveaway🎉 for THE GOOD MOTHER MYTH!
Hello there! Welcome to Write More, Be Less Careful, a newsletter about making space for creative practice in a busy life. I’m a poet and an essayist, and my most recent books are the poetry collection Pocket Universe and the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, which I edited with the poet Emily Pérez. My next book, The Good Mother Myth, will be out in January 2025, and you can pre-order it now!
This is the monthly intentions email, which goes out the last Sunday before a new month starts. [edited to add: it’s actually late this month!] It’s a chance to pause and set some goals for our writing practice in the coming month.
I have a Modest Proposal for August: let’s make it a month of Little Projects. Here’s what I mean by Little Project: something small, completable, and meaningful to you.
When my kids left for sleepaway camp, I made a list of little projects, with the idea that I could use the afternoon and evening time I’m usually spending slicing cucumbers and cooking mac and cheese and harassing them about taking a shower at least every couple of days to do some of the little things around the house I never seem to get around to. My list included really small things like “wash shower curtains,” “wash guest room comforter,” and “clear bulletin board in kitchen” alongside slightly more ambitious things like repainting the fireplace and figuring out what in the basement we can sell or give away. In the last week plus, I’ve chugged through a ton of those items, and the little zip of happiness when I cross each one off the list has been a remarkable counter to the sludgy feeling I often have by this point in the summer. So much about writing is slow and perpetually unfinished and uncertain. A Little Project is really the opposite of all that.
So that’s my pitch for August. The monthly intentions post is normally about setting your priorities and your goals for your writing life in the coming month—and I think that’s valuable, but I also think this is a month to maybe take it easy a little. I was initially going to suggest we all just take a break, and I stand by the restorative value of naps and sleeping in, so by all means, make that your project this month if you like—but if you want something with a little more shape, let’s pick a Little Project or two and making crossing that off your list your intention for the month.
a couple ideas for Little Projects:
little house projects: pick a corner where you’ve stashed the stuff you don’t know what to do with and clear it, tidy a closet, or clear a surface.
plan a gathering: host a goodbye summer party with popsicles and drinks, organize a book swap among your kid’s classmates so you can offload the copies of DogMan that show up in every corner of your house (this isn’t just my house, right?)
wrap up a writing project: pick one (one!) piece you’ve been laboring over or pecking away at, figure out what it would take to get it done, or at least to the stage where you can hand it off to someone else and ask for help, then do that.
The goal here is not to fill your entire August calendar with projects and plans. It’s actually kind of the opposite: identify a couple practical, concrete projects that you can do with limited time and supplies.
What does any of this have to do with writing? On the surface, maybe not a lot. But I think this kind of little project—something concrete, completable, and meaningful for you—can be an important form of creative rest. It’s a reminder that you can create something, that you can plan it out and finish it. And that satisfying little zing can help propel you into the fall and a new season of creative productivity.
I’d love to know: what Little Projects are you considering for August?
Here’s a fun thing: The Good Mother Myth isn’t out until January, but if you want to get it early, you can enter the Goodreads giveaway that’s running until August 28th. (While you’re there, if you could mark The Good Mother Myth as “want-to-read” that would be a big help!)
if you need a nap more than you need a Little Project . . .
on sacred spaces, Real Things, and no-phone walks as a path to a happier writing life (with so many great reader ideas in the comments!)
on deliberate rest as a means to restore your creative energy
on the slow, daily walk of regular writing
❤️️ if Write More has given you helpful tips and encouragement for sustaining your writing life amidst the chaos, click the little red heart at the top or the bottom to help other busy, dedicated writers find us! ❤️️
this month in Write More
✍️ poet Karen Rigby describes the process of writing the beautiful ekphrastic poems in her new book FABULOSA and offers a prompt to spark your own art-inspired writing
🌟“I’ve had to fight for this time but also accept that what’s possible shifts from season to season,” says poet and Ok, But How? creator
🌟 “my kids are expanding my sense of possibility for how to be in the universe, and that can only be good for my writing,” says Alyse Knorr, who along with her wife Kate Partridge talked about the “busy boredom” of raising little kids and sharing the work, in our first couple/co-parent good creatures interview
Write More, Be Less Careful is a newsletter about why writing is hard & how to do it anyway. You can find my books here and read other recent writing here.
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We are putting a Little Free Library in front of our house and brainstorming with our kids our plans for it. Also doing some good old decluttering before the school year starts.
I love this newsletter so much. Thanks for this treasure trove, Nancy! <3