I have been publishing since 2012, putting out several books a year for a decade, and took the last year off of publishing. At first, that was an intentional choice. The actual plan was to use the year to try out a few stories that I wasn’t sure about and give myself the space to not like something and still have something that I could get ready for publication the year after.
That plan fell apart pretty much immediately. Between the flood and getting sick with a chronic condition that I have not yet recovered from (I might one day, but it’s going to take a while) I have had to learn a lot about rest and figure out how I can still consider myself an author when I am not writing. Or when I am incapable of writing.
The thing I’ve come to realize in my time of forced rest is that the way I was going before, with time spent working almost every evening on writing the next book and making sure I was always busy with another new project, was probably not sustainable in the long term. I have needed the rest for a while, and finally circumstances allowed me to take it.
And rest has been hard. It’s not something that comes naturally to me by any means. I want to do things constantly, but this rest and the new habits that I’m building as a part of it are good for me in the long term, regardless of health. Spending hours on the computer churning out 5000-10000 words in a day in order to meet deadlines may mean that the stories get done faster, but ultimately that rate is not good for me.
I had my productive decade. And now I am entering an era of rest. Expect books much more slowly, as I try and find a new balance with where I’m at now.
