Productivity goals. Word count challenges. NaNoWriMo. Five books a year. Write one, submit one. As a writer, you’ll be forgiven if you feel like you can never take a break from your writing. Keeping up with the typists is a daunting challenge.
There’s nothing wrong with motivation, being challenged, or having accountability to yourself. After all, the one true rule of writing is that you have to actually do the writing.
Nonetheless, it’s easy to overdo it. If you wrote 500 words yesterday, why not 700 today? If you average a finished chapter every week, why not five or six a month? If you set aside 2 hours to write every day, why not three?
Because you’ll make yourself frantic or sick, that’s why. In a post on Writer Unboxed,
During a period when Dalton felt uninspired – and therefore pushed herself to work harder – her husband and son took (dragged) her camping. And then something interesting happened.
“About fifteen minutes into our hike to our campsite, while I was thinking about Chapter Seven of the new book, I noticed an enormous yellow mushroom that looked like a brain,” Dalton writes. “For a few minutes, I was alone in the woods. I heard the distant rush of water coming from a stream running down the mountain we were climbing up. I remembered why I wrote that first book set in the mountains and forests that meant so much to me. I wrote because I felt inspired by nature. I wrote it out of love and joy and passion. Not fear and stress.”
The change of pace, the break from her writing routine, helped Dalton rediscover the joy in writing, replacing her anxiety. When she returned home, she no longer had to slog through her work, but looked forward to her writing time.
It’s ok to take a break. Here’s your sign.
