Writing Diaries: We All Need a Break Sometimes
Taking a break professional writer and how to (try) not to feel guilty about it.
I finished writing When in December in a bit of a whirlwind the other week before rapidly sending it off to my editor.
And now?
I’m taking a break. Sort of. Or at least I’m trying to since even when you are taking a break, it’s hard to turn your brain off from writing-brain where you are still thinking about how you should be writing and coming up with tiny details that could be interesting to include in a future character or plot.
Usually, last year at this time, I’d be racing towards starting a new love story. Maybe I still should be.
Last year in 2023, I published Put a Spell on You in May and Call You Mine in September. Two books. In 2022, I published Words that Burn like Ash in January, The Way We’re Meant to Be in June, and Bewitched by You in September. Three books. Even somehow in 2021 when I first started to self-publish in September with The Strings that Hold Us Together, I also sneak wrote a tiny novella I published in November making for a total of two books.
So for now it to be 2024 and I’ve written one book, it feels like a downward slope, doesn’t it?
Since I first started publishing, I wanted to be writing and publishing at a pace where it felt like everyone else was also racing alongside me to create more and hopefully, the next big romance bestseller on Amazon.
For the past year, I honestly have felt more than a little guilty about my writing pace on this book as well as how while writing When in December, it began to feel like more of a job than a joy like writing contemporary romance novels used to when I first began or even when I finished Call You Mine where there was a sense of large accomplishment to finally working through a technically tricky and emotionally lovely romance between childhood friends across the course of 20 years to finally get to their happily ever after.
But, I try to keep reminding myself, even when the fame or big readership isn’t coming as quickly as I hoped and the only way to perhaps make it happen is to keep writing and keep publishing, is writing a great book isn’t like creating decent content.
Writing a book is so much more than creating a post or posting an image on social media, from its size to how much you hope that it means to yourself and also for at least one reading.
Writing a book comes from hard work and a determination that sometimes feels like it is sapping all your energy until you are simply sentences made out of words out of letters.
So when will my break be over? I don’t know, but hopefully (and likely soon). What is coming next when I finally open up a blank document again? I have a few things in mind, but for now, I’m waiting for one to speak up the loudest.
Currently finished writing…
Be sure to pre-order your ebook copy of When in December so it arrives on your Kindle the moment it’s available on release day!