. . . as I was reminded by my good friend Lord Byron:
For the sword outwears its sheath And the soul outwears the breast And the heart must pause to breathe And love itself have rest
Posted by EchoLaughing (Member # 8441) on :
Cool poem excerpt. I don't know enough poetry.
And I definitely agree. I think I'd go crazy from stress if I didn't take breaks where I just do nothing. But are you specifically talking about taking a break from writing? (Hehe, I've never written anything long enough to need to take a break from it.)
Posted by skadder (Member # 6757) on :
If you don't use it, you lose it.
Not really a poem, but its true.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
If you consider the "break" time as filling the reservoir from which you draw (for energy, ideas, etc), then it actually is a necessary part of writing. If you don't fill the reservoir once in a while, what are you going to write about?
Posted by skadder (Member # 6757) on :
quote:If you consider the "break" time as filling the reservoir from which you draw (for energy, ideas, etc), then it actually is a necessary part of writing. If you don't fill the reservoir once in a while, what are you going to write about?
True, we all need to feed the machine. However, I defined 'break' as switching off the machine; every time I've done that it is hard to get it going again and usually you have to re-learn stuff.
Posted by Cheyne (Member # 7710) on :
Even worse than switching off the machine is when/if the machine stalls. I recently recovered from a terrible stall in which I fell out of the habit of writing daily. I found that when I did not steal time for writing from other areas of life the writing did not get done. And other areas of life guard their time jealously; time I had made for writing was taken back up by these time-hording other tasks which returned them to me for writing only grudgingly. Be careful!
Write every day even if it is only for yourself. Time is precious and if you don't use it to write you will use it elsewhere. Stealing it back is the hard part.
Posted by annepin (Member # 5952) on :
Cheyne, you're absolutely right, and I think that's the most powerful argument I've heard for writing every day.