Summer is such a tricky time for travel writers.

If you have a family or friends that you travel with, it’s a time with much travel, but a frequent struggle between balancing the leisure side of travel (not just for you, but those you’re with!) with the demands of traveling as a travel writer, and all of the note-taking, picture-posing, and interview-grabbing that entails.

If you primarily get your work travel done in the off-season, summer can be a great time to relax and take a staycation to reset…but only if you have enough paid work on your plate.

With editors–of both magazines and websites, even content marketing ones–fleeing the confines of their cubicles on much needed vacations, it can feel next to impossible to score new work this time of year.

If you find yourself in that situation, as can happen to the best of us when a big client falls out from under us suddenly, look out for those opportunities to step up to the plate and help an editor out.

On my fifth wedding anniversary vacation in Greece, which was my first official non-working vacation as a freelance writer and something my husband and I had studiously saved for, I had an editor who knew that I was on a very sacred, non-working vacation come to me desperate because someone flaked on a feature.

He even told me if I had an article that I had previously written for someone else that could work, he would rewrite the whole thing for his magazine. That’s how desperate he was.

So if you’re not in a position to kick back this summer, look for ways to sub in for those who are.

You might just net a new long-term client!