Rest is a Necessary Part of the Creative Process
“I wish I didn’t have so much to write this week,” I said. It was exhaustion speaking, since I haven’t slept in days because of pregnancy-related discomfort.
And it’s summer and kids are home and it’s hard to get anything done at all, and all that needs doing hangs over my head in these moments when my guard is down.
“I’m sure your followers would understand,” my husband said, and, yes, I’m sure they would.
But it’s not as much about the people who read as it is about me, because what if taking a day off moves too quickly into taking more time off, since all that extra time to sleep and read and sleep and play and sleep might be nicer than I want it to be, and then it will all snowball and I’ll never find my way back into the routine of writing?
There was a time, two years after I got married, when I just folded up my writing and set it on a shelf, thinking there was no time to pursue it and it didn’t make any money anyway and I had responsibilities to my family. It was whole years before I picked it back up.
What if that happens now?
I’ve worked hard to establish a routine, rough draft of this today, final tomorrow, along with a rough draft of that, and every day builds on another day so if one day is skipped, I fall too far behind to ever catch up.
But what about when we need to take that time off? What about when we can feel the burnout creeping in because we’ve been working so hard for so long? What about when our mind feels fatigued and overworked and ready to quit?
Our writing only gets better when we work rest into our schedules.
Sometimes we can work ourselves so hard, and we can have all these impenetrable pieces of time we have set aside for creating time, with boundaries that say, “No trespassing,” and that’s all well and good, but there comes a time when rest is necessary.
If all we’re ever doing is cranking out words on a page, and we don’t allow a cushion for those needed days off, we will wear ourselves down to a half-version of ourselves. I want to be a whole version of myself every time I pick up the pen.
And so sometimes that means putting down the pen and letting that notebook rest for a day or two or a whole week.
I have been in a place of not creating anything, and it is stale and stuffy there. I have been in the place of creating too much, and it is stale and stuffy there, too.
The secret to unleashing our greatest creativity is to find balance between the work and the rest.
That’s not easy for someone like me, because there are so many ideas and so much to do with so little time.
The other day I sat in a music service, and my kids were in childcare and I had an hour and a half of uninterrupted time to create. I opened my writing journal and readied my pen, and I could not write a thing. Maybe it’s something that happens often to other writers, but usually, when I open my notebook and ready my pen, I always find something to write about.
That block got me thinking, about how I am creating all the time, because it’s something I must do to keep from exploding. But there is something else I must do to keep from imploding: Rest.
Working rest into our schedules is one of the most important things we can do — for ourselves and our art.
For some simple ways to work rest into your schedule, try this:
1. After every task you complete on your to-do list, take a break.
Do whatever you want on that break. Read a book you’ve been wanting to read. Watch a quick video. Go kiss you kids or your partner. Put in a few stitches on that product you want to make. Catch up on social media (but be sure to set a timer, because the Internet can be a black hole). Do what will fill you up and help you get back to work with a greater focus and fresh creativity.
2. Take a day off.
This is harder than it sounds for people like me. I really enjoy my work (as most writers do), which means taking a day off feels a bit like a chore. Sometimes it’s necessary — like when there’s a doctor’s appointment or something necessary. Sometimes I just know I need it, because I’ve been biting off the heads of everyone around me. Even though we enjoy our work, it’s important to step away from it.
What I do on my days off: read, sew, take my kids to the park and play freeze tag with them, play Dominion with my friends, record some songs in the studio, organize my closet. When it’s a day off for pleasure, I try not to do anything like laundry (which I really hate) or cleaning (which I hate even more). I try only to do what I enjoy.
3. When you’ve mastered the above, try scheduling a whole week off.
Every seventh week, I take a whole week away from my work. It doesn’t matter if I’m in the middle of a manuscript. It doesn’t matter if there are things left undone that really need to be done. I put down the work, and I rest.
It’s too easy, when we work for ourselves, to let that work take over everything. It’s a worthwhile practice to shut the laptop, slide it under our dresser, and forget about all those projects. Oftentimes, I’ll find that after a week off, a difficult plot line has completely resolved itself without my even trying. So not only does time off allow us to rest but it also makes us more efficient writers.
You may not be successful the first few times you practice rest. But keep trying. It’s always a worthwhile pursuit to learn how to rest well.
Rachel is the author of the kid-lit fantasy series, Fairendale; the poetry book, This is How You Know; and the Family on Purpose series. She writes about writing on her blog This Writer Life, contributes regularly to Huff Post and faithfully writes 5,000 words of fiction and nonfiction every day.
