Yep, I jinxed myself.
I’m not going to lie—June was a busy month for me. In addition to polishing up MFA Thesis Novel in preparation for my developmental edit, a lot of my attention has been focused on a Secret Change that I’m not quite ready to talk about yet (but will be soon!).
The problem with this Secret Change is that it turned out to be a MUCH bigger undertaking than I expected. It also required a LOT of email checking and sending, since information was constantly changing and I needed to stay on the ball. The Secret Change also involved a lot of stress, which affected my sleeping patterns and kept me up one night until two am to make a deadline, which threw off my sleep schedule for the entire week.
The reason I’m telling you this is because these two projects, plus a combination of other factors, meant that for the first time since January I wasn’t working on my new novel :-(
But What Happened to Your Weekly Novel-Writing Schedule??
A few months back I figured out that it was perfectly reasonable for me to set aside one afternoon/evening a week for novel-writing (about 3 hours or more). This was an incredibly focused time when I could make solid progress and feel good about the work I was doing, then have plenty of time for other responsibilities throughout the week.
The problem was that bringing the MFA Thesis Novel developmental edit and the Secret Change into my life mix is that this added too many balls to my usual juggling act. And as I described in my post about deciding your priorities, something had to give, and unfortunately that was the new novel.
I’m not really beating myself up about stepping away from the novel, though. I’ve missed four weeks (five if you count this coming week), and while that seems like a lot, I’m feeling good about this decision for a few different reasons:
- I’ve taken long novel-writing breaks before and always gotten back into the habit, so I know I’ll be able to do it again.
- I was still working on a different novel (MFA Thesis Novel) pretty consistently, so it’s not like I wasn’t writing at all.
- I didn’t step away from the new draft entirely: Last week I actually spent three days revising and checking a chapter for my writer’s group to look at, so I was able to step back into the novel’s world even if I wasn’t necessarily writing fresh pages.
- Since things got so insane in June, I realized it really was best for me to step back and finish up some other commitments first. I can’t focus on my writing when I’m too stressed, so reorganizing my life and smoothing things out had to be the first step.
That’s also why I wanted to talk about my hiatus here on the blog. I think a lot of writers get embarrassed when they’re not actively writing and try to hide it, since it makes them seem weak. While I 100% endorse devoting time to your creative work, I also think it’s also important to establish norms where it’s OK not to push yourself TOO hard, and to take a break when things get crazy.
What’s Next?
July and August are going to be big months for me, life-wise. As such, I haven’t decided whether I’ll continue taking time off from the new novel, so the writing break may or may not continue in some form.
What I am planning, though, is a short blog series about my Day Job in Japan, since I’ll be finishing my current Day Job at the end of July. This is a big reason for my recent upheaval, and one I’d like to talk about here in more depth. So, expect more on that soon, plus a few bonus tidbits as well. (Sneak peek, one of them’s a new Day Job interview!)
It feels good to be back :-)