If you’ve ever felt guilty about hitting pause on your current writing project, great news: you’re totally normal! Especially here in the U.S., we’re conditioned from a very young age to prioritize productivity over relaxation. And it’s especially harmful for artists, whose creative energy is often fueled by rest.
What I’m slowly learning, and the wisdom I’ll pass onto you as I do, is that rest is not punishment for not working hard enough. Taking breaks from writing — strategically, of course — isn’t just good for you. It’s an essential part of the writing process.
Social Media Platforms Teach Us All the Wrong Lessons
If you create content on the internet, you’ve probably noticed that after not posting online for a while, your articles, videos, and more tend to reach fewer people than before. It’s not your imagination. Social media doesn’t just reward its users for posting often. It also punishes them for not posting regularly.
I’m still in the process of undoing this awful mindset as a result — the belief that if I don’t post often enough, or I have the audacity to take a break, I’m going to lose my so-called influence. It bleeds into everything, even my writing. Because obviously, if we don’t write every day, we’re all just a bunch of lazy failures! Right? Absolutely not.
You Can’t Write Your Best When You’re at Your Worst
Burnout is real, and it can result from plenty of different things — even personal stressors at home, not just work. The pressure to keep writing is real, and sometimes it’s both justified and necessary — many writers have to make a living, after all. But the deeper you push yourself into mental fatigue, the worse your writing is going to be. And you might end up wasting a lot of time writing paragraphs you’re just going to end up deleting later.
Take the break. It might be more beneficial for you in the long-term than you think. If you’re struggling to write because your mind — and even your body — are exhausted, you’re much better off stepping away, even for just a little while, and coming back refreshed and ready to jump back into your work.
Treat Your Break Like the Vacation You Deserve
Capitalism wants us to believe we have to work to earn our vacations. Or breaks, or whatever you want to call them. Most of us are going to spend the rest of our lives undoing this mindset. You don’t have to earn rest. You deserve rest because you’re human. But also, your creativity and the future of your writing success depends on it.
When you take a writing break, you’re doing yourself and your stories a favor. It’s likely the best decision you’ll make for your career right now — you just don’t know it yet.
Meg Dowell Writes 