Good evening all you lovely, amazing people,
How are you doing tonight? How are you doing with this whole pandemic? A little troubled maybe? A little scared? So you’re staying home trying to find ways to fill all this extra time you now find yourself with. For writers, it can be difficult too. Sometimes if you have too much time to write, you find that nothing you write is good because you no longer get that spark that adds fuel to your words and makes them come alive on the page because you aren’t doing anything. Well, I’ve been having issues getting back to my writing as well I can only write a couple of hundred words before I can’t come up with anything else to progress the storyline that seems any good.
So, I’ve decided to take a small break from my writing and instead I’ve been reading a lot. I came up with a system to keep me from getting bored with the books that I’m reading. Because I’m someone who sometimes has difficulty getting into a story or getting through the less climactic middle of a story or I just enjoy the story too much and don’t want it to ever end so I read it more slowly stopping after a chapter or two or three, but not reading more than that. I read two books at a time that way they are both progressing, but are interesting in different ways and keep me on my toes and keep me reading because when I stop reading one and begin the other, I find I can’t stop thinking about what might be happening in the first book, then when I switch again it continues happening.
This way of reading will keep me reading for hours without getting bored and without making me feel as though I am wasting the good parts of the story because I want so badly to know how it ends. Instead, I can much better enjoy the journey and not just hope for the ending to come as soon as possible. It keeps me entertained and exploring the different environment through every page.
If you’re having difficulty writing or sticking to a schedule and you’ve tried for days or weeks and still have made barely an inch of progress I would suggest a small vacation from writing, some writers need a vacation once in a while too, we work just as hard as others do (if not harder) and take a different kind of physical toll, so give yourself a break if you feel you can’t make headway right now. Go easy on yourself because being a writer is not easy. Take a vacation, but never stop reading, your writer’s vacation is to catch up on your reading list to restock your mind and help things click into place. But don’t let yourself get caught up in the vacation either, get back to it as soon as you feel something stirring, a spark, a twinkle, even if it’s just a desire to write and not a mind-blowing idea that you can’t let go of. If it gets you writing, then don’t be afraid to give yourself the break you need.
Happy reading and writing!!!
Rose Marie