#largeprojects

Alright, so that title might be a bit misleading since I haven’t really taken a break from writing, I’ve just shifted my focus and schedule around quite a bit. Before this month, I was writing, editing and uploading a chapter every month for a little over two years. Now, I’m ‘taking time off’ to work on the detailed outlines making up the finale of the story. So I’m not writing less, but I am writing quite differently.

 I got rid of my old schedule and haven’t introduced another deadline. Instead, I’m looking at these outlines as ‘taking as long as they will take’. This decision was made to give my mind some room to breathe and to give me creativity enough time to recover and view the finale with a fresh set of eyes. After all, I have no following to speak of, no Patron’s clamouring for the next chapter and threatening to unsubscribe, so I wanted to use that to my advantage. The only pressure I’ve felt on this project has been from myself to prove that I could maintain a steady stream of writing over a prolonged period of time. I’ve definitely proven that and, even when I didn’t upload a chapter this week, I did go ahead and commission a piece of artwork just to fill the void.

 The effects of a looser schedule took a while to sink in. At the beginning of this month, I didn’t notice much of a difference. I was working hard on the outlines and I’ve made fantastic headway with them and rectified a lot of problems I’ve always had with the story overall.  I still had that itch to write and I was doing it and pleased with my progress. But it was only weeks later, towards the end of this month, that I’m beginning to really see a difference between ‘then’ and ‘now’.

 An important fact to keep in mind was the fact that I was doing freelance writing work over quarantine as well, which contributed massively to my creative burnout. For months, when I wasn’t working on my novel, I was working on someone else’s ideas. Often while dealing with customers that were less than pleasant or helpful, if I’m honest. So for months, I was up against deadlines on a near daily basis. I shut down my freelancing service when I went back to work and this ‘break’ followed soon after to focus on my own writing.

 My general mood is a lot better right now. I feel personally happier, less stressed and less tense on average in my day to day life. I find it easier to live in the moment rather than looking ahead to the next page/next draft/next chapter. So that’s pretty cool to begin with. But for my writing, it really gave me the space and time needed to get my thoughts together. It’s taken the better part of a month for my creativity to recover and begin to flow properly for the first time in almost two years, but it’s only now that I have a chance to breathe that I realise just how much pressure I was under for months at a time. I adjusted to the pressure so that after a while, I didn’t even notice it until it was gone. Like a backpack on a long hike; it’s heavy at first but with a little practice you can ignore it and when you finally take it off, you breathe a huge sigh of relief.

 That is what this break has been like for me. And with that weight removed, I slowly felt my creativity return until it feels like it’s back to normal. I feel a lot more engaged with Ruins of Dalaghast now than when I was writing it non stop, and during the outlining process, I’m finding a lot of ideas easier to come by than when I was half heartedly brainstorming while writing months ago. I still have quite a lot of writing to do before this project is over, but I am definitely reconsidering how I schedule the final few chapters moving forward.

 So, I guess the moral of the story is to take a break and let your creative mind breathe every once in a while. It’s taken a while for my own writers mind to begin working again like it used to, but it’s definitely getting there and writing is much more enjoyable nowadays, as I’m taking a relaxed approach to the subject, than when I was writing a chapter a month. It was stressful, but doable, and something I wanted to do for myself, but its effects can only really be gauged accurately in retrospect. I hope this helps someone out there who might be struggling with the same ordeal. Until next time, take care and keep creating.