Taking Breaks is Good, I Guess

Taking a break from writing feels like reaching into my brain with one of those carnival game claws. I have no idea what’s going to emerge, but I know it’s going to be weird.

For a Type-A everything person like me, taking a break from writing is hard. As much as I don’t want to define myself by my productivity, the reality is that any break time feels like time I could be writing. Or outlining. Or building a query list for a book I haven’t even started.

But lately, I’ve taken a few breaks. Around Christmas, I handed a revision off to beta readers and planned to spend a week off work reading lazily in front of the fire (or the fireplace livestreaming on YouTube).

Instead, by day 4, I’d written 3,500 words about getting lost in an ocean of trees. And brainstormed the rough premise of another novel.

Here’s the thing: I had been chugging away at my YA contemporary fantasy for so long⁠—first drafting, then revising⁠—that I’d forgotten how to let any new inspiration seep in. It was all idea output, no idea input. But then, I set that book aside. I’m still reeling from the volume of new ideas that flooded in during just that week alone.

I’m taking another short break now. You’ll never guess what’s happened.

I’m a big believer in pushing forward through those mental blocks, when you’re drafting a project and dragging and would rather turn to a shiny new idea. I’m a fan of setting goals and steadily working toward them for months on end. I’m the kind of writer who wouldn’t scrap a draft before the end unless I had a really, really good reason.

And it’s true! I still believe it. It works for me. But now, alongside that philosophy, I’m returning to the idea of refilling the creative well. Of allowing space for new things to come in, or to just plain rest, because I deserve that, too. My only resolution for 2022 was to do less, to recognize that if I’m just not feeling a project that day, it’ll still be there tomorrow and the tomorrow after that.

Which, counterintuitively, is transforming me into a better writer. I’m still a goal-setter, and I’m still driven by the desire to get things finished. But now, I’m trying to be a rester, too. The kind of writer who lets their brain sit just long enough for it to show its cards.

The trick here is that, when I wrote my weird little tree story and came up with those new ideas, I did it without a goal in mind. It was still my rest time. But I’m not going to ignore a burst of inspiration and desire to write when it hits, either.

It turns out that when I sit in that silence between goals and let my creative well go still, the water is clear enough to reveal everything I couldn’t see through all the ripples.