Writing Inertia

For the past two weeks, I've been engulfed by the responsibilities and demands of my day job.  Meaning, when I've dragged through my front door each night, I've been too brain dead to even consider what I need to do next with my novel-in-progress.

Two weeks is a dangerous span of time for writers.  In two weeks of not writing, skills can atrophy with alarming rapidity.

It's just enough time to settle into the habit of not writing, and grow comfortable with that.

Beware!

In two weeks of not writing, you can forget where you had intended to take your plot next.  You can lose the momentum of that last scene that you had to leave unfinished.  You can relinquish passion for your project.  Worst of all, you can begin to doubt the validity of your idea, plot, and characters.

Inertia is defined by Webster's as remaining at rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon by some external force.

In other words, inertia means that if you're writing daily the momentum you achieve will continue until you hit a plot snag to be solved.  Inertia means that if you've stopped writing, you will continue to not write unless you force yourself to leave the doldrums.

It's been said that it takes 30 days to establish a habit.  If you stop writing, the habit of nonproductiveness will form much quicker than that.  Before you know it, your imagination will be calcified.