Time Heals All?
Does it heal, I wonder?
Over at my private blog I posted a confession and I might as well get it out in the complete open:Â I haven’t written anything on my WIPs in over two months! Umm, that is until yesterday. I have resolved to write SOMETHING every day. Even if that something isn’t much of anything or even good…it’s something! After all, you can’t call it a WIP (work in progress) if there isn’t any progress, right?
Reading over one of my WIPs yesterday to refresh myself with the story, I started to see that I do still like this story and I still see potential in it. It somewhat shocked me! Not because I had left the story because I grew bored with it or anything. That isn’t the case at all. But because I was reading it as a reader would and I was enjoying it. Granted there were many flawed areas that I corrected along the way, but it was enjoyable!
Now I might as well tell you why I stepped away. Life, in general, required my full attention and didn’t allow me to focus on my writing. And as any of you can guess, when you’re not focused things go wrong! On a side note: I still haven’t tackled down my muse 100% but I’ve vowed to myself to add something new to this project to keep myself moving forward.
So does giving my story time to “air out” allow me to enjoy it again? Maybe? I can’t truly say, but I can say that working on it yesterday was like a spring flower in bloom. I know, sad little metaphor there. But it was! Just opening the page felt refreshing and had new life to it. To put it to better words, it was like greeting an old friend whom you use to spend hours chatting with and adored with all your heart until life got in the way kept you from good times. Hows that for a metaphor?
So tell me, have you stepped away from a project (this is to include the non-writers out there) only to find it rejuvenating and fun (again) when you returned? Did the time away really help heal the issues that plagued you to begin with?
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Hm. I think it can. I’m still in stepping away mode, but I think if you keep hammering away at a creative project, even when you don’t feel it, you’re making yourself tired and therefore less likely to be really creative and catch mistakes you might have made.
Taking a break sounds like you would come back to it with fresh joy, new ideas rolling around, and a general sense of excitement about the project
I think it varies between projects. I have one that I sort of keep in the background and never truly work on, but every now and then I go back to it and read it (it’s mainly notes) and I add stuff – or simply add ideas as they come.
For my regular stuff, I had a long break unfortunately with writing – and being back in school isn’t helping much. (I almost miss work – it’s so much easier cause there’s no homework!) I do think you can come up with new things when you come back, but maybe there is also a risk of losing your stride? To be quiet honest I never found my stride with my current MS, but I’d love to write it – so I can’t quite figure out if it’s just not working because.. well, it’s not a working story.. (and I should start something else) or if it’s not working due to my stress.
Early on in this writing career, I took a huge break from it all – not because my stories were giving me problems, but because I let a stream of early rejections depress the heck out of me. When I finally kicked myself in the butt, it was like wading through mud to get writing again, but I’m glad I did it. My stories are better for learning that rejections don’t matter. All that matters in the writing.
Ack! All that matters IS the writing.
I agree with this. I deliberately took a week off before submitting one of my assignments, just so that when I went back and re-read it I could view it with a fresh pair of eyes. I think this helped. It also gave me a chance to think of another aspect of the assignment so make it slightly more interesting for my tutor to read.
I admit it too – I haven’t worked on my WIP for a while either. I’ve had a few other things happening, such as buying a house and these assignments, to keep me distracted. I’ve decided to try and get these assignments out of the way before I move (I have about 2 and a half months to go), then I’ll get stuck into my writing again.
I did step away… Now I just need to find a way to step back into it!
I’ve had that problem too Erica. It’s actually harder to get back into the story than I’d thought, but I’m not giving up.
Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!
I’ve had to step away before also. From one MS I wrote about a year ago, I took six months off from it…boy was it hard to get back into! I couldn’t remember anything! But once I did read through and posted notes, here and there, it went much smoother. I think everyone needs a break now and then!