Photo Credit: Fork Shoals School

Down here in the lone star state Spring Break has officially begun. This is the first time since 1997 that I’m not in school during the holiday week. I’m not complaining. But I know others in my age group (18-22) who are still in college and will be celebrating the week off from school. There will be countless parties to attend, too much alcohol consumed, trips to other parts of the country, and who knows what else. I’m not discussing the traditional Spring Break for the typical twenty-something, I’m talking about Spring Break for the book lover!

Browse

Do you typically get your books from Amazon? Or Barnes and Noble? Or Books-A-Million? Or maybe on your iPad or Kobo device? I don’t care where you get your books from. I don’t. But tell me what better for you to do than browse for some new books starting right now and getting through them before you have to return to school? There is not a thing better. So if you’re a book lover, and I’m betting that you are, then get your mouse clicking or get to your local bookstore and find you some books to read this week!

Read

By now you’ve done your browsing and buying, right? Better have! Now find your regular reading spot and get started! There’s no point in getting your hands on some fresh books to have them sitting there in your ‘to-be-read’ pile. Honestly, that makes me angry when I see blog posts about having stacks and stacks of books ‘to-be-read.’ I mean, come on. So don’t be one of those guys. Get your new books out of the bag or the trusty Amazon box and get started reading. Now.

Write

Do you happen to be a writer too? Perfect. You’ve left your manuscript sitting there on your computer screen far too long. That ends right here, right now. I’ll acknowledge that most writers are probably done with school with regular jobs and don’t get off of work this week, BUT I’ll also tell you that you’ve done made all the excuses to not get back to writing that you can possibly come up with. Open the file. Take a deep breath. Write. It’s that easy. You may not have the week off from school like all the kids, but you need a kickstart to get back to your writing, and this is it. After all, no agent ever agreed to represent a manuscript that never made its way out of the ‘first draft’ stage, right? Right. Now write.

If you reach Thursday and you’ve read four books, written ten chapters in that great manuscript of yours, and you find yourself wondering what to do…then start from the top and REPEAT!