My writing sabbatical is over, having managed just over a week. Yesterday I sat down and wrote a couple of thousand words that I liked. It’s been a long time since I could say that.
I have quite high standards for myself, and coupled with the mean streak of people-pleasing that rests inside me, I find it too easy to put myself under pressure. A lot of the time, well, most of the time really, I expect things of myself that God doesn’t. You might have picked that up from stuff that I’ve posted here before.
I think that just giving myself permission to take a break, and to write when I want to write was what made the difference this time. It also helped that I had something that I wanted to put down on paper. Sitting down to write just for the sake of it can be a useful discipline, especially for someone like me, but in recent weeks it had crossed the line into an unhelpful legalism. There is no joy in doing the right thing without having the freedom to choose the wrong thing. This time, I had spent a few days thinking and constructing the scene and dialogue in my head before I even started at the keyboard. As a result, I already knew that I was happy with what I had, and the writing was natural.
Another big help was the comment that Pete made on my blog a couple of weeks ago. It motivated me, without putting me under pressure, and reminded me of something else: The moment that my writing becomes a thing apart from the Kingdom of God is the moment that I should stop.
As the nights draw in, and the weather slides into the winter freeze, I at least know what to do with myself. That’s nice.
