058: 3 Times to Take a Break from Writing
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3 times to take a break from writing
Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the blank page to book podcast. In some ways, this week's episode is the opposite of our tough love episode that we had a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago, I gave you a few pieces of tough love advice to help you get back to your manuscript if you haven't been writing for a while. If you've been coming up with excuses, if you just need a kick in the butt to like, sit down and write that will that episode was a few weeks ago. And then I wanted to do kind of the opposite this week and say, okay, yes, sometimes you need tough love to get you to sit down and write. But sometimes you need to take a break from writing, sometimes it's a good idea to step back from the manuscript to give yourself a break.
So these are three times in the writing process, when it's a good idea to take a break. Number one, the first moment is more of a practical tip, when you are finished with the first draft. I love the editing process, I feel like it's almost a mild form of torture some days to get the first draft out. Of course, I have moments where I enjoy it too. But once that first draft is done, I feel like I can really start working on the book, I feel like I can get my hands dirty, I can go in and shape it and clean it up and polish it and tweak it. And I love that process. That is what I look forward to in the writing process itself. So the minute that I get done with my first draft, I always want to turn right back around and start editing.
And I kind of have to hold myself back because I think it's a good idea to take at least a few days, where you are not doing anything writing related, you are not looking at your manuscript, you're just setting it aside, taking those few days, or even those few weeks, can help you get some distance from what you're writing, especially if you take a little bit longer. If you do take a few weeks, and then you go back in, you can see things from a more distance objective perspective, it helps things seem a little bit more fresh.
And you might spot things or you might react differently than if you had just turned right around and started editing after you pressed, you know, after you typed the end, and wrote the last word of your rough draft. Now how much time you take is going to depend on a lot of things it's going to depend on if you have a publication schedule, if you are wanting to self publish your book, and you have said, hey, it comes out this date, and you don't have a lot of wiggle room, then you might just it might not be possible for you to take three weeks and not think about your book that might not be possible.
But as much as you can try it again, just at least take a few days where you're doing nothing related to your book. And if you're like me, and you love the editing process, this might be hard. But even taking this few days is just such a good idea. And you can also celebrate I mean, you need to celebrate and acknowledge the fact that you got through your first draft, which is an amazing accomplishment and turning around and the second year of are finished writing the rough draft going into editing. It's like we almost don't acknowledge all the work that we've done. We almost don't take that breath to be like, Okay, wow, I can't believe I've finished my rough draft. This is incredible. So the second time that I suggest taking a break from writing, if you're feeling burnout, the symptoms of burnout vary, it's going to look different for every writer. But what can happen is if you have been holding yourself to a very rigorous writing schedule and routine if you have been writing a lot, maybe if you just completed NaNoWriMo and you wrote a ton in the month of November 1000s and 1000s of words, hundreds of pages. If you are being extremely hard on yourself, about your writing and how often you're writing or not writing. Those things can lead to burnout.
Not for everyone not to say that if you're writing a lot, it's automatically going to lead to burnout. If you feel good if you feel fine, by all means please keep going. But burnout can lead to this feeling of overwhelm it can lead to this feeling of dread. If you are feeling dread, every time you approach your manuscript every time you sit down to write or just think about sitting down to write and it feels like this massive daunting negative thing. Then that might be assigned It's time to take a break. Of course, there could be other things going on, maybe you are feeling overwhelmed, and dread because you have to make a decision about the plot and you don't know what you're going to do or you realize you have a lot of work left to do in the manuscript in editing. There could be other reasons why you feel that way. But honor how you're feeling pay attention to that, especially if you are feeling burned out and overwhelmed and rundown in other areas of your life.
This happened to me recently, where it wasnt so much that I was experiencing burnout with writing specifically, because I wasn't writing very often, I wasn't writing much at all. But it was my editing, it was my business, it was doing everything myself not hiring help, it was trying to do all kinds of things outside of that like to, you know, personal development things and go exercising every day and going for a walk and getting enough sleep and reading for fun. And all of these other things that I was doing on top of my work and my schedule, it just got to a point where something had to give, and I was experiencing those feelings of burnout, in my business in work, and that was trickling over to writing. So when I would think about writing, when I would think about opening my manuscript, it just felt so overwhelming. And this can be true. If you're having like mental health issues, something or physical, you know, other health issues that come up, you can definitely experience these feelings of burnout, and it can bleed over to your writing. So if that's the case, a break might actually be the healthiest, best thing that you can do, is to just step back to give yourself some grace and know that your manuscript is always going to be there, you know, it's saved on your computer, or in your notebook, it's not going anywhere, you can come back to it.
And my third suggestion for when to take a break, is kind of related to number two, and the feelings of burnout. And you're gonna laugh when I tell you this. But take a break, when you honestly feel when you deep down, you feel like you just need a break. There can be all kinds of mindset issues that come up, there can be all kinds of plot issues that come up, where you have questions about how to resolve things, you're feeling blocked with a certain chapter or a certain scene, you maybe you're doing a lot of comparison, maybe you're just not liking the direction that your story is going.
So you need to take a step back, there can be all kinds of reasons why it's just a good idea for you to take a short break. And step aside. Now, with burnout, if there's something more serious going on, it might make sense to take a longer break until you can heal those symptoms of burnout, make some changes to your schedule, get some outside, help out some support with your mental health or whatever is going on. But so you might have to take a longer break in those instances. But if you just are having if you're feeling blocked, if there's some sort of issue in your story, then set the manuscript aside for a short time. Now, it's important to not let those mindset issues that perfectionism stop you completely.
It's not a good idea to do that to be like, Well, I just need to set this manuscript aside, until I can resolve this issue, and then the manuscript sets for six months or a year. But if you honestly if you do a gut check in you honestly feel like taking some time away from the manuscript and not forcing yourself to write would be good, then it's important to listen to that. Now only you know what the difference is? I can very easily make excuses, for example, about why I can't write my go to excuses always like, well, I'm so busy with work, i'll write tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll wake up early, I'll do it before I start editing before I check my email before I do whatever else. Tomorrow, I'll feel like it. And I always put it off. That's like my go to excuse. So when I hear myself saying that I can kind of recognize like, Okay, I think this is probably just an excuse, versus something more serious, where it would actually be beneficial for me to take a break from the story. I'll give you an example of a time when I did this. It wasn't burnout. I wasn't holding myself to an insane writing schedule. I hadn't finished the first draft yet, but I felt like a break might be appropriate.
I got about 10,000 words into my book. And it was different. It was different than the final version that I ended up writing. In this final version of the main character is 29 years old. And in the first version of the book, she was 18. And she was starting college and I was taking the reader through these events that happened her freshman year freshman and sophomore year of college, and I got about 10,000 words into this story written in third person and realized I didn't like the direction it was going. It just didn't feel right. I didn't want to write from the perspective of an 18 year old college student I didn't want to write in third person. It just didn't feel like the right direction for the story. So I took a break. I set it aside they'd let them some things percolate. I lived my life, went outside, took walks, read a lot, and a lot of different genres just did everything I would normally do. And then came back to it. And I think it was maybe a couple of weeks or something. And then I started over again, I said, Okay, let me just scrap that I know, I want to make her older. So I decided to make her a 29 year old who was looking back on some things that happened when she was in college. And I also changed it to first person. And that felt so much better to me to do it that way.
So that's a time where it wasn't so much that I was just making excuses. Like I didn't want to write, and it wasn't burnout, it just felt like I was at an impasse. And I needed to take a step back to figure out what I wanted to do. Now I could I could have pushed myself to just right through it to keep going. But because I was only 10,000 words in it felt like the right decision to stop, take a break, reassess, and then come back to the manuscript so that I just share that as an example. In case it's helpful. So you can kind of see the difference of of when it might be appropriate to take a break or a good idea. And when it's like, oh, wait, I think this is actually just an excuse. But even if it is, you know, if you feel like you want to take a break, take a break.
Again, there are no unless you are on a self publishing schedule where you have to get the book release a certain date, or something like there's no deadline if this is your first book. And you are not sure if you're going to query to try to go down the road of traditional publishing or if you're going to self publish it or if you want to try and find kind of a hybrid option, a publisher to work with, then there's no deadline where your book has to be done. So you can take breaks, it's perfectly fine to take breaks. Okay, I hope that was helpful to hear about the three times when you probably should step back from your manuscript. I'll see you next week.