Taking a Break, by Neil McGowan

 I’ve been thinking about the old adage to ‘write every day’ recently, and have come to the conclusion that it just might not be the best choice all the time.

For years, I was a proponent of it, and it shaped my writing habits – if I couldn’t type something up, it’d be scrawled on the nearest piece of paper to be tidied up later. Most times, it didn’t feel right if I had a day off writing, like an itch that hadn’t been scratched.

Then lockdown happened.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not exactly a social animal – when asked about returning to the office recently for ‘the social aspect', I asked what that entailed; I was told I could talk about the football, TV shows, and music. I don’t think my response of ‘I hate football, don’t watch TV, and don’t like the sort of music they play on the office radio’ went down well, and neither did my request for noise-cancelling headphones to drown out the noise.

Joking aside, I have genuinely found myself to be more productive working at home. I can have my own choice of music on (so no inane DJs shouting between songs, and no (shudder) shouty adverts) and, whilst I do put slightly longer hours in (I tend to sit at my desk around fifteen minutes before official start time and will finish anywhere up to an hour after my official finish time) I don’t mind – I figure, it’s time I would’ve been commuting, anyway, and the lack of a commute means I start work relaxed, rather than stressed from fighting through Edinburgh’s rush-hour traffic. As my job entails teaching, I’m finding I’m more adaptable virtually, and can run courses with higher numbers of learners (our on-site classrooms limited me to eight at a time; I now run courses for fifteen people).

So, all good, you’d think, but what has this to do with writing?.

Except...

My writing output has dropped off a cliff the last few weeks. Some nights I’d force myself to write, only to delete whatever drivel I’d managed to produce. Other nights, I’d think, ‘Ah well, perhaps I need a rest from it tonight’ and do something else.

Sub-consciously, I think the second option was more right than I knew.

It was only when my parents came up to visit for a week that I realised. They usually visit twice a year (my father is in his eighties, now, and has a few mobility issues) and I always take a few days off to spend time with them. This time, however, I managed to get a full ten days off.

For the whole time, I deliberately didn’t think about writing. I chilled out with family, spent time in the garden, caught up with some music on my listening list, and generally relaxed. By the end of it, I was starting to feel that itch again, and more importantly, I was having ideas. I spent a week or so just jotting some of these down, and reckon I’ve got possibly six book ideas. (Actually, I’ve got three or four times that, but I reckon that only some of them will have ‘legs’ and the others will either fade away or be subsumed into one of the other ideas.)

So do I want to go back into the office part-time? No, for all the reasons originally stated. Do I recognise that I need to have days off writing to let my batteries recharge? Absolutely. No more beating myself up if I go a day without writing. Instead, I’m going to treat it as a learning opportunity, see what ideas a non-writing day can generate.