Taking Breaks Are Vital to Your Writing
By: Tammi Brownlee
Tags: Life Lessons, Writing, Relationships, Advice, This Happened To Me

Taking Breaks Are Vital to Your Writing

How a week without writing changed the way I look at my life

Photo by Jared Rice on Unsplash

One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given was the need to take breaks, to give your mind a rest. This past week I have taken a break from writing and I discovered I was not as productive as I could have been.

The work I was producing was not up to par with my own standards, let alone the standard which captures readers. I underestimated the critical need for breaks my mind required to refresh, refocus and decide what it was I wanted to accomplish.

Part of the reason for this is I depend on my writing for income. It is a way of life for me and I am sure many other writers like yourself. If you are reading this then there is a basic lesson to be learned here.

Taking a break from writing is essential for your mental health, your soul and your sense of well being. There are many things I learned about myself, my writing and my goals in life over the last week.

Focus and clarity

For months I ran on empty, my gas gauge was teetering on the big E, never making it to half full which means I was never fully recharged.

When you allow yourself to balance on the edge of falling you don’t produce the work you are capable of. Being sub par in a world full of great writers you need to be at the top of your game.

My own focus was non existent, I couldn’t find but also didn’t know it was the missing element during those dark days. Taking this break allowed me to step outside myself and see the mistakes I was making.

Those mistakes are currently being used to teach me what it is I really want. The clarity of my life and how it should be shines in my mind like the rays of the sun. Showing me the next step.

Without that break, I never would have discovered the type of writing which makes me happy, what I want to do with my life and career as a writer.

Goals make themselves

Goals are the number one thing every writer should make. Even for non writers this is an important step to accomplishing your goals.

During my break my new goals wrote themselves, I wasn’t even trying to make them. They just appeared out of nowhere. Of course I wrote them down, breaking them into smaller pieces and now have a new game plan to follow.

When you keep trudging along on empty these goals tend to stay buried, never reaching the surface. The focus and clarity help bring them up, causing them to float in the front of your mind waiting for you to take charge of them.

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for writing fiction and I have tried writing novels but never finishing them. This was mainly because I thought novels and short stories were the only way to get my idea told.

During the last week I discovered my ideas are better written in another way, screenwriting. I have taken one of the novels saved on my computer and transformed it into a screenplay, something that I hope will do well in a contest I will be entering at the end of the month.

I have found writing a screenplay helps me bring my story to life better than writing a novel. While this is not to say I won’t ever write a novel, but my new focus is on this type of writing. My new goals are now centered around this new concept.

Seeing your life in a whole new light

This is probably the hardest thing I realized during the last week, but the most profound. I had been so busy writing I failed to notice what was happening around me. Or maybe I did and just didn’t want to see it.

Nothing helps a writer more than having a partner or family who supports you and has faith in all you want to accomplish. Without this you are left floundering on the edge of a cliff.

For me, I discovered I don’t have the support system I imagined. The person I thought believed in me has actually been just going along with the flow. Sadly, I believe there needs to be some serious pondering about the prospective outcome.

Life decisions are never easy and change is hard, but sometimes you have to make the tough decisions in order to make yourself happy. My new found focus and clarity have helped me create new goals for my life and where I want it to go, and no matter what it takes I know I will get there.

Final take

Life, itself, has a way of knocking people down. You need to regroup yourself to discover what it is you really want out of life. No matter what it costs, you need to take breaks, you need to refresh your mind. This feeds it to help you create the life you want.

Sometimes stepping outside the box and looking at your life from a distance can give you the clarity you need to refocus your energy on the things which matter to you.

The above is what I learned from taking that much needed break. Whether good or bad, we all need that.