This newsletter is coming to you from a much-needed week off of editing that I scheduled in after months of non-stop work. Don’t get me wrong, I love my work and have gotten to edit some amazing stuff lately, but I was desperate for an edit-free and social media-free break to relax, recharge, and catch up on all the things that have been shuttled off to the side in my busyness.
For any kind of creative person, rest time is absolutely necessary to prevent burnout and also to remind you why and how you create. But I know that’s harder and harder to do right now, especially when the world tells us we have to be working and hustling and creating constantly— and that’s really freakin’ exhausting at the best of times, let alone when there’s a whole damn worldwide pandemic on and when you're working another job, or you're parenting, or educating your kids at home, or some or all of the above.
In a creative profession, where your brain output is the product—and particularly in romance publishing telling you that you need to constantly produce new books at a superhuman rate (I have many thoughts about this and have a newsletter planned for it in the future)—your brain needs downtime to go offline and clear some space so more creativity can flow. By resting, you allow your brain to go into the default mode network—switching off your action-oriented thinking and giving your brain the space to wander and play and get new perspectives on things. It lets things process in the background for a while so they can eventually come to the forefront when you’re ready to sit down and write again, making rest a vital part of the creative process.
When you’ve been going for so long, actually taking some time to rest will help you break from the monotony of everyday and the work, work, work grind.
Rihanna gif: work work work work work
This will give you an opportunity to reflect on how you work and if it’s serving you well—are you doing things efficiently, or are you doing things in a certain way because that’s just how you’ve always done them? Is there a better way? The time off will give you pause to really consider how you could be doing things differently and to dream up new processes that might make life easier for you in the future.
Rest will also boost your productivity when you come back to writing again. I’ve been off for two days right now, and having nothing planned for the next week means I don’t have to think about all the things I have to do tomorrow or the next day or the next, and now I have brain capacity to let big ideas come through—I already have my next four newsletters planned (a week before I have to send one out is usually when I start thinking “oh shit, what should I write about??” and freaking out), planned social media for the next month (which will give me way more time during December for everything else), and started figuring out my goals and projects for 2021.
So how do you actually take breaks when it doesn’t seem like there’s any time? Build them into your schedule. Use your vacation days at work—it’s not like you’re going anywhere these days. You’re meant to use those days, and let’s be honest, you don’t get enough of them (doubly so if you’re self-employed/a full-time writer), so don’t let them languish or lose them. Don’t think of it as losing money or productive time—the whole point of vacation days is to give you that rest so that you can come back to work and be more valuable without burning out (thanks, late capitalism!), so apply this thinking to your creative endeavours too so your writing has the same weight as your job. It’s an immense privilege to take a whole week off, and I recognize that, but the value that I know I’ll get out of my downtime will more than make up for lost income and will help me be a better editor for my clients when I come back so I don’t lose them because I’m too burnt out and exhausted to give them the quality they’re paying for.
If you are able to take more than one day off, awesome—that’ll give you more time to actually recharge and not do all the things you’ve been meaning to do on that day off instead of resting. I sometimes try to take Sundays off and not touch any editing work, but if that actually happens (which is rare), I’m usually catching up on my to-do list of chores, emails, organizing stuff for the week ahead, etc., and that’s not really rest. You can do those things on your time off, of course; just make sure they’re not dominating your break and you’re actually taking time for what you want to do, not just for your responsibilities.
If you can only manage a day off at a time, make it a day for you and spend it reading or hanging out with your family or Netflixing or whatever you like to do, and don’t look at your phone or computer at all. Creatives aren't really great at knowing when to shut off, and it often feels like we should be working in our "spare" time. But you are allowed to be selfish with your time—the world tells us we’re shouldn’t be, but eff that noise. Claim your time for yourself, not your work, or your house, or even your family.
I know it feels impossible right now to take a break when everything is go, go, go all the time and you’re balancing a million things. I know you're hustling. I know it's hard to stop that grind. But you deserve that time off, and if you can carve out time for yourself, you and your work and your mental health will be in much better places when you come back, fresh and ready to take on the world again.
The brain shutdown is essential to keeping your creative juices flowing. Be kind to yourself and take care of you.