Break

That's past tense, not a promise of what's to come. Spent four consecutive days doing nothing but playing boardgames with friends. A yearly tradition that leaves me exhausted, but the good kind of exhausted. Tire but happy. My brain turns to a warm bowl of oatmeal garnished with a cinnamon stick. Absolute comfort.

I didn't realize how much I needed a break until it was taken. Part of me wanted to wake up early and get down a page before leaving the house each day. What would have amounted to token progress for the sake of progress. Not a valuable step forward, but the creation of placeholder to make me feel better about allowing myself to breathe.

It's been an awful long time since I took a proper break from writing. Ever since this whole business started up some three years ago, I've written almost every day. Breaks typically came one day at a time and only after finishing a chapter (barring some kind of sickness putting me on my ass). My longest breaks came in the form of a week after the completion of a full draft. Even then I would be thinking about the project to come next.

Loving something doesn't mean I shouldn't take the occasional break. A proper break, at that. One where I let the whole arc fall out of my brain for a few days and focus wholeheartedly on something else. The benefits were tangible the moment I picked back up. Looked back on a handful of lackluster pages, ripped 'em out of the draft, and started fresh. Both pace and quality were leagues ahead of where I left off.

I guess the short version is, "Yes, there can be too much of a good thing."

Until next time,

Toodles