Permission
Where in your life is surprise still allowed to exist? Was it ever?
Like most of us, I write like my life depends on it, like a single day away from the page will cost me everything I've built. You know what I mean. You have felt this fear. Why?
The publishing industry is filled with unpredictability. Alongside our successes: the agent who ghosts you. The publisher who passes. The reviewer who gets it completely wrong. Painful as they are, the grit and resilience they teach us are some of our most important survival tools. The rules of engagement.
Then there's the page. The one place in the entire ecosystem where you decide what happens. Where your character lives or dies on your terms. Where no gatekeeper, no market trend, no algorithm can reach you while you're inside it.
So no wonder we don't want to leave. Stepping away from that freedom feels dangerous because we're protecting the one sovereign territory we actually have.
The paradox I've discovered, though: the tighter we hold on, the smaller it gets.
Planning
When I think of July, I remember summers growing up in Hingham, Massachusetts. Long days, light until nine, a half mile from the beach and no agenda. One day I walked out to Button Island at low tide — half a mile across the exposed ocean floor, alongside clam diggers in rolled-up pants. The sand felt like wet concrete under my bare feet, the air smelled warm and ancient. Like I was seeing the soul of the ocean. A sacrilege.
No planning, pure discovery.
This month I'm taking a week away. I'll bring my laptop — not for marketing, not for business, but for my novel-in-progress. Creation — the kind where no one's watching and nothing's due. Is that leisure? Maybe for writers, creation is its own form of rest. The unscripted hour. The long walk with no destination. The surprise I didn't plan.
Now in Northern California, the ocean is cold. But summer, for me, means something specific. The only way I can truly breathe is when my feet are touching wet sand.
Breathe
It's summertime and you're ten. No school, you missed dinner searching for frogs in a creek bed, staying out until dark. You roamed without destination, without a single measurable outcome — and it was the most alive you ever felt.
Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we become experts at inhaling — taking on more, doing more, carrying more.
No one teaches us how to exhale. You learn it because you catch a glimpse of someone else doing it. You wonder: could I allow myself to be that relaxed? What would happen? When was the last time I let life surprise me?
To me, exhaling is about surrender: pulling your fingers off the keyboard and trusting that the words will find you another way. Through the tangled seaweed. The hot sand. The big sky when nothing exists but an empty afternoon. The magic of the page is fed by the uncontrolled world.
Is there an afternoon where you could escape into nature, discover someplace new, your Button Island? Take off your shoes, feel the hum of the earth beneath your feet. What happens when space meets intention?
The July Issue is LIVE!
Two months ago, I sat down to write the opening essay for the July "Leisure" issue of Story Impact Magazine — permission, restoration, stepping away. Halfway through, I realized I was completely unqualified to write about this topic. I don't know a thing about leisure, and this issue is as much for me as it is for you.
What you'll find inside:
The Permission Gap — the quiet lie most working authors carry that rest is only allowed once the work is finished.
Open Range — three western authors on what wide open spaces do for your nervous system and your prose.
Creative Cross-Training — four writers on the benefits of other creative modalities to your writing spirit.
Analog Reset — could you spend an entire day apart from tech? (Maybe start with an hour.)
Plus publishing industry guidance, interviews, poetry, and inspiration.
When did you last roam without a measurable outcome?
Read the Leisure Issue here — wander in.
Find a field under a big sky…and run. How does it feel? I’ll see you there.
Lisa
