The Guilt Free Writing Break

Write every day.

That was what I heard from working writers over and over again. It was in just about every book and article I read. In every lecture and interaction.

Write every day.

So, I wrote every day. Even when I was sick, or exhausted, or just plain not in the mood. Sure, I snuck a few days off (like Christmas and my birthday) here and there, but there was always this steady march marked by word counts, deadlines, and desire.

I did that for the past fifteen years, and all those dreams I had when I started scribbling came true. In that time, I published 35 books, from a children’s picture book with Random House, to a slew of horror novels with Samhain Publishing, Pinnacle (Kensington), Severed Press and more, and incredible ghost-writing gigs.

Feeding the beast that was my muse (a rather pleasant lass who is demanding but has my best interests at heart) was my prime directive. If starved my muse or got skimpy with the day’s meal, that old bastard, guilt, would tap me on the shoulder. I hated guilt and would do anything to avoid him.

Then the fall of 2023 happened. I moved my family out of state for the first time in our entire lives. And while we were in the process of boxing up our belongings, my wife’s doctor told us he was pretty darn sure she had some kind of blood cancer, so let’s do every test known to man to find out what it is.

There we were, surrounded by our belongings in a beautiful house, two states away from her doctors, filled with joy, trepidation, and creeping fear. We decorated like crazy for the holidays, hosted friends and family, traveled for tests and fretted over results that were always inconclusive. On top of that, I was adjusting to working remotely and had a deadline to meet for a ghost-writing project.

It was exhausting. The silver lining is that we loved where we lived and weren’t being robbed blind by New York prices. I somehow managed to finish the book in January of this year, around the same time the doctor said it probably wasn’t cancer, but he did find rheumatoid arthritis (just another tagalong disease to add to Lupus, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and several others). In our special way, we were relieved.

And I was plum pooped.

Whenever I tried to write, I couldn’t get past a few hundred words. It was if I’d never written in my life. All those skills and word muscles I’d developed over the years went to flab. Guilt sat atop my laptop screen, wagging his finger at me.

Then my muse popped in and said she was tired, too. She promised the flow of ideas would always be there. Let’s just take a break. And if during that break we both decide we’ve done our part, that was okay, too. Reinvention, taking on new challenges, are the core of the human experience. A bibliography of 35 books was a kinda cool achievement and about 33 more than I thought I’d ever write.

I took a break. I settled into my home. My wife’s health, which is always in a precarious balance, improved, so much so that we’ve had the best run since my writing odyssey started. We went out like the old days. We spent our time in the sun at the pool. We went to drive-ins. We turned our house into a home and explored our community, making new friends and finding sweet spots to eat, shop, or just enjoy nature.

Best of all, that bastard guilt was nowhere to be found. I watched my muse lock him in a trunk and toss him out to sea. I relaxed, I read, I enjoyed all that extra time with my wife and family.

After a wonderful eight months, not knowing if I was ever going to write again, I’m back in the saddle, on my own terms. I have a new ghost-writing job that will be a lot of fun. I have a proposal out for a pretty cool drive-in theater tie-in that I hope will make a ton of readers smile.

I’ll go where my muse takes me, except we’re older and wiser now. I’m starting to think guilt is a younger man’s game. I’m officially in my ‘I’ve got zero fucks to give’ era, and it feels great. The sands of time ain’t slowing down, even though I am…just a tad. That’s a natural thing in your mid-50s. Nothing to bemoan. Rise and grind can kiss my ass.

If you’re kicking your own ass and fretting over word counts, likes, subscribers, reviews, take a good long breath. Life is too fleeting to get caught up in the artificial madness. When you exhale, get back to writing, or don’t. Maybe find time to rediscover why you wanted to be a writer in the first place. Find that love, that passion, that compulsion that lit a fire in your soul. Or maybe there’s something else that has been calling to you, but you couldn’t hear it over the wall of noise you built around yourself.

Do what makes you happy, and be happy with what you do.

Sometimes taking a break is the only way to find out exactly what that is.