Sometimes you need a break

Breaks are how you learn to start again

“In the quiet, you find the honesty that screams truth.”
–Nikki Rowe

From all appearances, nothing's changed. Your daily routine, your mug of coffee, the satisfying clacks of your keyboard. Then you look closer: the story you're writing doesn't make sense. You pour more time, more attention, more coffee on your troubled narrative, but nothing you’re doing is working. So try doing nothing. Sometimes you need a break.

A break is a pause from a routine. Breaks are healthy. Thinking takes calories and the body machinery needs rest. You gotta oil the gears of creation so you don’t grind yourself into oblivion. Breaks also help with endurance. Attention is like a muscle and it needs downtime to recover and grow.

Breaks are also a part of the work. Every piece of music is dotted with little spaces called rests, where the musician stops making sound. But rests are part of the music, not holes in the song. The same is true for your creative process. A break from the bass line reveals different as…