Every writer needs to take time out and recharge, a fact that's been hard for me to learn. I'm one of those people who is constantly pushing herself to get more done. I'm at my computer most of the hours in my day, usually attempting to write or revise or crit something. In the evenings when I'm "spending time with the family" and watching TV with the husband, I am also writing or critiquing or revising. I don't give myself a break, a lot of which has to do with the way my mind works and the fact that I generally need to be multi-tasking.

With that kind of non-stop focus on writing related activities, it should be no surprise when I find days that I can't seem to get a single thing done. I'm on the computer, but none of my usual writing related stuff is being worked on. I'm distracted and find it hard to focus. And when I try, the words don't come or come slower than molasses on a cold day. Being the over driven idiot I am at times, I usually try to push through. Eventually my mind and body insist and I spend even more time finally resting than I would have if I had just given in and taken that break in the first place.

Writers need time off. We are told by so many writers about how they write every day without fail and how every writer needs to form a habit of writing every day. And I agree with that to a point. I repeat: Writers need time off.

Without time off, the creativity seems to dissipate, it's harder to focus, and writers block becomes more common. You struggle over the words. Even revisions become a chore rather than the joy they can be. Changing to a new project like a different book or a new short story might recharge you for a bit, but eventually even that loses its power to keep you going. Changing to a new writing related activity, like critiquing, may seem to be a break, but it's not and eventually it too adds to the burnout that you're building to.

Writers need time off.

That means time AWAY from the writing and nearly anything related to it. I say nearly because reading, as long as it's done for the joy of reading, can recharge your batteries and still have an impact on your writing. But, even if you read, I think writers need more than that. They need more than a walk, more than an hour with the family. Take the evening off every day, and take a day off every week. Walk away from the writing. Cross-stitch. Work on your web site. Grab the family for an all day picnic. Swim. Ski. Paint. Whatever! Enjoy life. Leave the writing behind. Completely.

I am not advocating that writers do this every time they feel their writing has become a struggle. That can lead to not doing any writing at all and using needing time off as an excuse to avoid the hard work. But that type A, driven, all work personality is just as bad for a writer as it is for anyone in any other career. It's unhealthy. And it adversely affects your creativity, ability, and skill in your writing. If you're tired, your writing will sound tired.

Writers need time off. So take it.

Now, where is that cross-stitch I was working on?

Being a writer isn't easy. Oh, the writing itself is easy enough for most of us, it's the discipline and consistency that are tough. It's a solitary activity. There's no one to report to except your computer, no weekly paycheck that will be affected by you being there or not being there, no coworkers to miss you if you miss a day. There's only you and your computer or typewriter or paper and pencil. It becomes so easy to miss a day or to putter around with other things so much that you might as well have missed the day. And it becomes easy to let changes in schedule or location to interfere with your writing. In the end, it's often easier not to write.

One of the hardest things for me has been consistency. Reading my writing journal is like reading about a roller coaster of progress and lack of progress. One day I am right on and do 3000 words, the next I'm lucky to get 500 down. It's not that I don't try on those days where I only manage 500 words - I always try. And it's not that I don't have good reasons for not doing well on those days - many times there are good reasons for missing the mark. But I also know that some days there is no excuse for my lack of progress, and I honestly could not tell you why I was having so much trouble getting the writing done.

Until recently, that is.

One thing that seems to be hard for every writer is getting back into the writing habit if they've been out of it for any length of time longer than, say, a day or two. When I moved from California to Georgia, I really fell out of my habit for nearly two months. So when it came time to get settled back into it again, I found it very hard to do so. I've had a "writing ritual" - habits that help get me ready to write - for over a year now and even that wasn't helping me to get back into my writing habit.

I finally decided I needed to look through my writing journal and see what kinds of things contributed to my success as a writer - what got me into writing, what made my days successful, and what made a day a total bomb when it came to writing. Once I had a list of those things that helped me write and those things that interfered with my writing, I went through my entries again to try to find the ones that had the most profound impact. When I narrowed all the positives and negatives down to the most influential, I came up with three keys for a successful writing day for me: bed before 3 am the night before, taking my medication for my ADHD, and breaking my weekly goals down into daily goals.

A light went on. I've been making sure to do these three things since the day I realized they are the make it or break it requirements for a successful writing day for me. Yes, there are other things that help contribute to my success as well, but those three are the absolute musts, and they have helped me get back into my writing habit.

I believe every writer can create an environment for success, they just have to find their own keys. This environment is more than just the physical setting, although that is definitely a part of it. I need an organized (not necessarily spotlessly clean, but neat) desk, the books I access the most nearby, and loud, alternative rock playing. I also prefer to have the rest of my work area fairly neat, but am learning to work around it since we're still living out of boxes because of lack of furniture. An environment created for writing success also includes whatever rituals you need to get yourself ready to write - whether cleaning the kitchen or checking your email and online forums before getting started. And, finally, an environment for success includes making sure to do those things that contribute to a good writing day, whatever they may be.

Every writer is different, and every writer will need to create an environment specific to him or her. Many writers try to set their environments up intuitively, but this approach has its problems. First, a writer who doesn't have a clear idea of everything s/he needs risks missing one of his/her keys to success and not doing as well as s/he could that day. Second, we often associate an environment with a particular place - my old apartment in California, for example. Taking the time to discover and write down what our needs are makes it less likely to miss a key item and makes it a lot easier to take that environment with us when we need to.

Every career has its needs - mechanics work in garages with their tools nearby, child care workers create rooms that have everything they and their kids need, and so on. Writing is no different. We need our tools, we need our environments. And we need to create those environments with the same care as the child care worker does - knowing the needs of children and the tools of the trade. They study for the field, taking classes in early childhood studies, intern in classrooms, and so on, so they can do the best for the children in their care. How can we do any less for the stories in ours?

My presence here has been sketchy at best these days. What can I say - real life happens, sometimes in the most inconvenient of ways. But not being here doesn't mean I'm not writing. I'm involved in writing related activities every day - revising, critiquing, drafting, or working on background material. When I don't write, I feel it, and not in a good way. A lot of that comes from cultivating a habit of writing daily, but some of it comes from knowing time to write doesn't just happen. Writing isn't something I "find" time to do. Writing time is created.

Every day we make decisions concerning our time. What will I have for breakfast - a microwaved egg and sausage sandwich or a bowl of cereal? Which route will I take to work? What will I do on my break? What will I do, if anything, while watching TV tonight? These decisions don't just affect health and life style; they affect our time. A lot of our "time wasters" are necessary things - refilling prescriptions, time stuck on the freeway getting to where we need to go, and so on. Others, however, are merely choices. How much TV do you watch each week? Spend "just surfing" on the net? Wander around the grocery store trying to remember what you need because you didn't write a list?

I often hear writers say they couldn't find the time to write recently, but they'll "do better" this week or next or when the current spate of busyness is done. The problem is "finding time" in our busy lives - as significant others, employees, students, parents, and whatever other roles we fill - doesn't speak of a commitment to our writing. More importantly, "finding time" isn't any more likely to happen next week than it did the last. If writing isn't important to you, then that's fine. But if writing is important to you, particularly as a career goal, then "finding time" won't cut it. We have to make the time by carving it out of our busy days and committing to it. Ask any full time (or over loading!) student who also has a job how they keep their grades up and they'll tell you - they make the time. If it means staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning to write that B+ or better paper, then they do it. We all make time for the things we consider important.

And so it should be with our writing. Get up early or stay up late. Trim a little here, cut a little there. Use your free moments even if all you have is a 15 minute break. Multitask - write while watching TV, write while riding the bus, write while standing in line or waiting for the prescription to be filled. Use your writing as a means to unwind, unload, and to take a break from the rest of your day. Grab every extra moment and fill it with words. I'm a substitute teacher who does more than just baby sit her classes. I often have to plan, hunt down resources, and teach, and I always leave detailed notes for my teachers. Sometimes I even have to take work home with me. But I always take a chapter or a story to work with me and use whatever free moments I have to write, revise, or critique. If I don't find time during my day, then I write to unwind when I get home. I'm almost always revising or critiquing while watching TV - and some days that's the only time I can carve out of my day to do so.

Every writer can create time for writing. It starts with a commitment - deciding you will spend time writing every day. Meeting that commitment may be as simple as taking one of your current works in progress to work with you. Some of us, however, have more complicated lives and may need to trim a little here, carve a little there, or learn a whole new level of multitasking. Still, if writing is important to us, and we can "find" the time to play on the PS2 or watch TV, then we can create time to write. Commit, create, do. If we do that, we'll waste less time looking for what's hard to find, and spend more time doing what we want to be doing: writing.

There are times in a writer's life when writing just isn't possible. We all have real life to contend with, and it is very good at throwing the nasty and unexpected at us--situations that eat up time and emotional resources and need our undivided attention. It happens to all of us, full time and part time writers alike. Whether you're out subbing in a classroom for 3 months, moving, or dealing with a difficult family situation, do not feel guilty about the time needed to get through your real life distraction. Give yourself permission to do what you need to do.

However, there comes a time to recover your writing. Sometimes we need space after difficult circumstances before we pick up a pen again, but there's a fine line between breathing room and procrastination. Once you cross that line, it becomes harder to return to the writing life, and it keeps getting harder each day that goes by. And often that line is closer than you think, especially if the circumstances that dragged you from it took a long time to sort through. The writing habit becomes replaced with the TV habit or some other activity, and it becomes a battle to reestablish yourself as a writer. If you were in the midst of a number of projects, particularly book projects, you may even feel lost and have difficulty finding a starting point.

Begin small. Establishing your writing habit the first time probably required baby steps. Recovering that habit will require the same small steps and patience. If you're in a crit group or workshop, begin by critiquing someone else's work. Get in touch with that writer's instinct again, Renew your love for the words and story telling. Then choose your first piece to revise. Choose carefully. Make it something you love and something short. Picking a piece close to the polishing stage is probably a good idea too. Nothing can be more discouraging that seeing your worst work--and we all have to admit that those early drafts can be appalling.

When you're ready to pick up a larger project, particularly a book, read what you revised before. This will help you get back into your story and rediscover the story's voice. Scan through the pages waiting for revision to refresh yourself on the plot and renew your acquaintance with the characters. Re-immerse yourself in your work. Not doing so can leave you feeling lost or make more work for you later as you try to blend two very different voices for the same project.

If you find yourself blocked or struggling, back up a step. Sometimes we need to stay at an easier stage longer to get comfortable again. Work on something every day. Shuffle through your pieces until you find something you can work on. Whatever you do, don't quit without making progress on at least one piece. Even if it's "just" a short poem, it builds confidence and helps recover your writing. Soon enough you will be working on new words, revealing new stories.

Any recovery takes time. It requires exercise and rehabilitation. Just as if was a slow process to develop a writing habit in the first place, it can be a slow process to recover one. We may even find ourselves revisiting old insecurities and issues we thought we settled the first time around. The key to recovery, just as it was when training ourselves to write daily, is to not give up.

Most authors don't choose a career in writing because of the money. For most of us, writing is just not going to be something we can rely on the pay the rent every month. So, the majority of us have to do the job thing, especially if we have more than ourselves to think about (the starving artist gig doesn't go very far when you have kids). Unfortunately, the standard, every day, paycheck a week (or two) job cuts into writing not just in time, but also in energy and motivation, and it can be a real challenge to finish even the shortest of stories, much less a novel. At the end of the day, there's not much left over for writing, even if there's time.

One solution I've found is to write in the cracks. Every job has cracks--those spaces of time between tasks, or breaks in the day when you can sit back and not concentrate on work, or moments when there's nothing demanding your attention. These moments are the perfect opportunities to make space for your writing. Oh, they don't do well for the actual writing portion of the process, but they do provide time for some of the other tasks of a writer: world building (such as a character profile), outlining, revising, market hunting, even critiquing if you're a part of a workshop.

I always take writing to work with me: a chapter or two of the current novel in revision, a short in need of attention (as long as it doesn't need a major overhaul), the manuscript I'm reading for a friend, a piece or two to critique, and my writers notebook (which goes with me everywhere anyway). Taking such a selection allows me to pick and choose not only what I'm in the mood for, but what I have the time for. On good days, the kids work and I revise or crit, and I get quite a bit done. On bad days, the only time I can do anything is during my planning time. I will admit it was much tougher finding the time to do anything during my long term positions since there's almost always something that needs to be done (planning, grading, meetings), but I usually found some small way to keep in touch with the writer in me, it just took longer to get anything done (which was certainly better than not doing at all).

Days off will always allow the time to work on those things that require more concentration or a higher word count. But don't limit yourself to a days off kind of writer. Those bits of time at work may not allow for much, but they do allow for something, however small. They are tiny moments of forward progress. Writing at work can be the highlight of your day and even help make a job more tolerable. And, at the end of a hectic day, a day when you come home and all you want to do is fall asleep in front of the TV, writing between the cracks also lets you say, "I wrote today." For some of us, that's a big accomplishment all in itself.

Every career has its tough stuff -- tasks and requirements that are unpleasant or difficult. Writing has more than its fair share of these challenges: working alone, setting your own schedule and sticking to it, submitting despite the rejections and lack of encouragement, even the rewriting and revising can get tedious. But doing these things are part of a particular line that divides the serious writer from the hobbyist: perseverance. The road to any success as a writer is a long, slow battle uphill, and very few become stars. And for most of us, every sale is a testament to our determination. A friend once told me that every story has a home, and he's right. The hard part is finding it.

Perseverance goes beyond the market hunt. We can't give up on our stories at any phase of development. They may require more revisions than we thought we'd ever need to do, or a complete rethinking or rewrite. We may have to set them aside, sometimes for years, but we can't give up on them. Perseverance means working through the challenges, whether those challenges are finding a new market after a stinging rejection or picking up a novel we abandoned after 4 attempts to write through to an ending. It means doing what we need to do despite how we're feeling, despite lack of support, despite the obstacles, set backs, and discouragement.

It doesn't come easy, this determination. Like almost everything else about writing, it's something that happens one step at a time. A story gets returned, the comments aren't so great, and you decide to hunt up a new market anyway. Choosing to write a little more on the next chapter after a long day at the "real" job and frustration with progress on that novel. Only the serious writer does these things and all that other "tough stuff" that makes writing what it is. They don't give up on their stories, their dreams, or themselves.

There are just times when a writer has to step back, whether from writing itself or from a single project. For career writers, there will be many of these moments over the years. And most of those career writers will feel guilty for doing so. Writing is a business. Stepping back means losing valuable work time and money. As noted in my previous article, Recharging Your Spirit, all writers need time off. They need ways to refresh themselves. This can only be good for the writing. There is no reason to feel guilty about taking time for oneself, no matter the profession.

But there is another kind of stepping back that is often harder to justify. Setting aside a project, any project, is a difficult decision in a business where finished projects determine your value as a writer, particularly if a lot of time and effort has already been put into it. All that work is seen as wasted and that pressures the writer to continue. Other writers can add to this pressure without realizing it -- they like the project and want to see it done. They may indicate that the author's misgivings are related to a lack of confidence and advise the author to just push through those feelings by continuing to work on it. Even articles like the last meta, A Dividing Line, can pressure a writer into continuing where she or he should not.

Sometimes a writer just needs to take a big breath and set aside a project. This is particularly true if the project is ambitious with a lot of advanced techniques involved and the writer is new to the career of writing. No one walks the day after they are born, writers can't fly the day after they first pick up a pen. We all want our stories to come out "just right," but for that to happen the writer has to be ready. It's about limits, and most people don't know where their limits are until they've pushed past the boundary. Once that's happened, it's more damaging to the writer and the work to keep going than to set it side for a time.

How big of a breath will a writer need to take? That depends on the writer and the project. Regardless of the time, however, an author shouldn't feel guilty about putting something aside until they are better prepared to work with it, even if they have to set it aside several times before they finally finish it. Picking it back up and trying again often takes more perseverance than just moving on to another project. Everything in between those efforts is nothing more than breathing.

We've all heard it: "To be a real writer, you have to write this way!" Whether it's outlining, writing from beginning to end, or writing scenes and shuffling them until you find the right sequence, a lot of writers seem to think their way of writing is the only way of writing. It was this attitude that held me back for years with my first novel. When I first started writing, I thought all writers started at word one and ended at word the last. I tried it and stalled, so set the book aside for a very long time. When I picked it up, a much older, but not so much wiser me, listened to the voices that said that real writers write their novels in just that way. I set book 1 aside again and tried it on book 2. Book 2 stalled. I set it aside and tried it on book 3, and book 3 stalled as well. I finally realized that, regardless of what real writers do, I don’t write that way. I had to find my way. So I picked book 1 back up and tried again, this time approaching it as a learning novel. And, boy, did I learn.

I learned that real writers write in the way that most encourages them to finish the work. I learned that we all have to figure out what works for us as individuals. No one else can tell us this, we have to find it on our own. Maybe this is why so many first novels end up in the bottom desk drawer or under the bed: these are the novels that teach us how we need to write. The process of floundering around and trying to figure out what works for you is bound to affect the quality of the writing, if not the story itself. But it's a process that must be experienced. It involves not only finding the way that works for you, but also learning to hold to it. It's working through this process that makes you a real writer. It's working through this process that gives you the courage to do what you need to do as a writer regardless of what others, particularly experienced writers, say.

This doesn’t mean you don’t explore other options. We all grow, as people, as workers in our jobs, as a part of our families, and as writers. We learn of new ways of doing things we never even thought of before. If we shut these ways out because we've "always done it this way," we risk becoming stagnate, and no writer should be stagnate. Writers are explorers. We explore the world through words. By experimenting with new ways of writing, we discover new tools that aid us as writers. We learn. We grow. We revitalize ourselves and our writing.

How should you write? You should write in the way that fits you. Experiment until you find the way that gets you to a completed story or novel. Your learn whether or not your style of writing is influenced by length or genre or any of a number of other factors that come into play when writing. For example, I write my shorts from beginning to end, from first word to the last, without outlines or notes of any kind. This is known as an organic linear style. This is the way of writing that I thought, and was later told, made a person a real writer. But I can't write novels that way. To complete a novel, I write mostly in a linear structured style -- using outlines and notes to help me get to the end, with a lot of organic writing (world building and adjusting the plot as I write) thrown in. Occasionally, I even have to write novels in a non-linear fashion just so I keep moving forward on the novel without letting a scene hang me up. And I'm learning I have to be careful with how much world building I do and when I do it. Too soon or too much and I burn out, I don’t want to do it even though it's necessary to the continuity of my novel. I have to space the world building out to make it work for me and the story. That means there are a lot of times when I'm writing without any clue whether it will fit into the world I have made for it. But this is okay. That's part of what revision is for.

When it comes to your writing, you do what you have to do to get it done, just like anything else in life. You find your way, and you never let anyone convince you that you're wrong. As long as you finish the work, it's right for you. It's the way you should write.