When summer rolls around, commercial writing work often dries up. Don’t panic – use the quieter months to tidy up the backend of your operation in time for the autumn rush. Here’s a handy checklist.

1. Overhaul your website and CV

Check that all your latest publications, client names, and portfolio links are up to date and working. This review can get you thinking too: as Elna Cain says in her advice on summer slowness, ‘sometimes I’ll realize my positioning has shifted and certain pages no longer match the kind of clients I actually want to attract now’.

2. Refresh your email signature

Check it’s updated with links to your latest book or a new service so that every email you send acts as subtle marketing. Do you need different signatures for different hats you wear? Now’s the time to sort that.

3. Audit your tech subscriptions

Check you’re not paying for things you don’t need, like duplicate storage fees, or subscriptions to things like Adobe or ChatGPT you don’t really use. Recently I discovered I was still paying for indemnity insurance insisted on by a client I no longer work for. How about web-hosting and email services? Some services can be cheap to get you in then shoot up after a year of two.

4. Update you social media profiles and bios

Don’t forget things you may have set up and rarely look at, such as Linktree, which has lots of links that may need checking and updating.

5. Review your blog/Substack/Medium content

If you post on your own or other sites, check stats to see what’s gaining traction. One useful exercise is to replace or add in cross-links to best-performing posts.

6. Review expenses

Take time to log and check everything you can claim for taxes, from a percentage of broadband and phone bills to office supplies and domain hosting. Worth researching. There may be more you can claim.

7. Do some warm outreach

Reach out to past clients and key contacts you haven’t spoken to in a while with a brief, friendly check-in note. Diana Kelly Levey’s guide on handling slow times recommends going back through a couple of years of contacts.

8. Clean up your physical workspace

Clear out all the old notebooks, coffee mugs, and loose receipts cluttering your desk to improve focus and productivity.

9. Sort that reading pile

If you’re like me you’ll have a pile of newsletters, articles, and bookmarked content that you’ve set aside for a quiet moment. Start by doing an initial purge of stuff you’ll never read (perhaps because it’s no longer relevant), and prioritise the rest.

10. Check your tech

In the street where I live, people endlessly complain on WhatsApp about the broadband. I thought that was why my laptop was lagging recently, but then I found this HP guide with 15 fixes for a slow laptop – worked wonders for me!

11. Brainstorm!

Spend some time generating ideas so you’re ready when it comes time to pitch again. Look back to ideas that never got commissioned, or that could easily be repurposed. I like to look at overseas websites and markets for inspiration, too.

12. Do a course

Platforms like LinkedIn Learning or Udemy offer free or low-cost modules on all sorts of topics that could expand your marketability, from Content Strategy in the Age of AI to Building Resilience to Optimizing Your Social Media Profiles for SEO. Many are just 30 minutes long.

13. Chase payments

Go through your invoices and chase any that are outstanding.

14. Optimize your LinkedIn profile

Update your headline, banner, and summary on LinkedIn. There are courses that can help with this and lots of guides, like this one for technical writers.

15. Update your writer directories

Refresh your profiles on platforms like Contently or specialized job boards so you show up in active searches when clients start planning Q3 and Q4 budgets.

16. Plan your financial safety buffer

This Freelancermap article on dry spells recommends looking at historical earnings to help you calculate how much of a financial cushion you need to stay comfortable during seasonal lulls.

The summer months might be sluggish when it comes to gigs, but it can be quite productive otherwise, making you even that much more productive when the work comes back around.

BIO – Dan Brotzel’s latest novels are Thank You For The Days and The Wolf in the Woods. He also writes widely on Medium

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