Maybe I Should Take a Writing Break

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2015’s been a busy year for me. Getting into Self-Publishing, writing/publishing 4 books and building this blog into something significant and holding down a Day Job while keeping my sanity at…well, sane levels. Many long nights at the keyboard writing, too many cigarettes and enough coffee to float a battleship. That’s been basically my daily routine for the past 10 months.

I like to keep busy and I do not like unfinished stories that sit in the active file waiting to be finished. I currently have 28 of them on standby including the sequels to Parallax. Now, I did commit a personal boo-boo when I promised myself a break during the last quarter of the year (October-December) but decided to take on Lights and Shadows instead. I’ve always been the guy who tells others to keep moving forward but not at the expense of losing your mind and beating the enjoyment out of something that at its core is about personal entertainment first.

What do you guys think? I know that any breaks I take mean adjusting personal schedules and of course, the stories will be there when I come back. I wouldn’t be leaving the blog, though; that’s become a source of entertainment in and of itself and I couldn’t leave it just hanging out there in Space.

17 thoughts on “Maybe I Should Take a Writing Break”

  1. It is very difficult to juggle many things for so long. I definitely get it. But how long of a break were you think of taking? If you feel you’re at risk of losing your mind, then definitely do it. Otherwise, keep going with your writing. Maybe take a vacation, or little artist’s dates?

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    • To be honest, I was thinking of taking the rest of the year away but then I remembered that I have a yearly ritual for the last two weeks of the year when I unplug from the Internet. It’s supposed to be for the Holidays…hehe.

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  2. I, too, was falling asleep at my computer at 4 AM every day writing. Then, health issues slammed me and I couldn’t sit up (surgery) .It forced me to slow down. All I could was work laying down with my Nook (to keep my blog going. somewhat) which is slow going. My book files are on my computer. Finally, I’m back up for about an hour at a time. But, all in all the break was good. It gave me time to think about things and changes to make. Sometimes you have to take a step back and regroup. Sometimes it’s good to rearrange you’re schedule and do things in a different order. Gee, I got to watch a zillion movies on netflix and catch up on books I wanted to read. Good luck!

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  3. I think we all need breaks to prevent burnout. You don’t want to turn something you love into something that’s a total chore. However, a three month break is pretty long – it wouldn’t be wise for me to go away for that long. I did it last year and I found it VERY hard to recover from. Especially in winter, when my body and sanity is already taxed by the cold.

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    • Yeah, I had a lot of time last night to ponder it and that’s definitely way too long to be away. I ended up deciding to take two weeks at the end of the year to decompress before I jump into the 2016 Schedule. Heh, I don’t need NaNoWriMo because I already do it on a daily basis. 🙂

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      • I think two weeks over the holidays is a perfect time to take a break. I don’t know about you, but that time of year is always so busy that I never get anything done anyway. May as well spend it with friends and family and remove the guilt of not writing. And even though I know that the New Year is kind of arbitrary, it inherently feels like a great clean slate to start anew.

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      • It’s good to take some time away to turn off the thinker for a while. I always knew that getting a writing career off the ground was going to take some work, but man, it sure strains the patience…hehe.

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    • I have a tendency to get overloaded when my ambition starts to overload my sense of influence. Then the spazzing takes over for a while and like a thunderstorm it goes away and everything becomes clear again. 😉

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