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 ...