Preparing for a vacation – or getting ready for research

I’m getting ready to go on a short holiday and I realized that it’s been years since I took a real vacation. Since I started writing, I always have a research project going on or had a major writing goal for my holiday.

When I went to France last year, I was researching locations for Greed. When I was in Italy I was trying to write Closing the Circle. Now I’m off to Portland Oregon for the second time in a couple of years. Last time I was looking for places to have people murdered for Imperative – Portland has no alleys so I moved the series to Vancouver where we have great ones.

This time I’ll be doing some research for a romance I’ve written that takes place partly in Portland. And I’ll be writing and revising and plotting. I’m starting to get exhausted.

I think I’ll make some plans to not have plans. To take a break and do some reading instead of writing. Maybe I’ll come back refreshed like I used to when I took a break from work.

What do you think? Do you turn off and take your vacation? Or do you try to cram in as much as you can?