Taking a Break for Practice and Rediscovery

After a lot of thought and consideration, I have decided to halt my regular writing projects and deadlines to take a step back and reflect on my writing and writing practices. I have felt for some time a disconnect from my writing (and life in general) and need to get back in touch with these things. I have rediscovered an old technique of free writing and am taking it to the extreme by only doing free writing for the next few weeks until I have worked through some underlying issues and found solid ground to work from again.

 In order for me to do this and keep the spirit of freedom, I need to suspend regular posts on this blog. That doesn't necessarily mean I won't be posting this month, but instead of striving to get a post out on Tuesday and or Saturdays (like I'm supposed to be doing) I will only post if I feel like it. I'm not sure what that will mean. My blog might be the Sahara Desert for the month of December with hardly any posts to none, or it could be the Breadbasket of the Internet that will have an over abundance of posts. I just don't know.

I will say that I am feeling very pumped about the progress I've made so far in the last week or so of my new outlook with writing. In fact, I stumbled across a book that has made this journey an even bigger must and more realistic for me. If you feel the need to beef up your own concentration or maybe feeling a bit lost at sea when it comes to writing, check out Barbara Baig's book How to Be a Writer: Building Your Creative Skills Through Practice and Play.

This book has a lot of wonderful exercises to try that will change the way you think about writing, the practice of writing, and how you approach writing itself. I have only done the first three chapters of exercises and already have a staggering word count of 8,000 words in a two day period (for me that is a record) and the things I have stumbled upon in writing those 8,000 words has put a lot of things in perspective and taken me in surprising directions.

Anyways, I am excited about the journey in front of me and for the first time in a long time I see writing as something fun instead of work that needs to be done, so you'll excuse me if I take a vacation and indulge myself in some play. I hope to come back to regular scheduling in January, but again that depends on where the journey takes me in the next several weeks.