About a month ago, I did.
I just … stopped.
Stopped writing.
It was, and is, a most peculiar feeling. Nothing prompted it. I wasn’t burned out, or ill, had ‘writer’s block’, felt stressed, over-committed elsewhere, or anything that I could point to and say, ‘that’s why.’
In the movie ‘Forrest Gump’, there’s a part where Forrest is unable to process what he’s feeling and he starts to run, (the only thing he’s ‘good’ at) away from his home, down the driveway and along the street. He keeps running. Across the US, from one coast to the other, then he turns around and runs back across the country until he hits the other coast. He does this a couple’a times until one day he’s running along a deserted road in the middle of nowhere, and he just … stops.
Come to think of it, that’s what he does throughout the movie. He does a thing, until it’s done, then he stops.
That’s what happened. I was doing a thing, and then I … stopped.
And now …
And now … I’m starting again.
Isn’t that odd?
Yes. I once just stopped for 7 weeks in the early 1990’s and then started again. My time off was spent painting and when I started again I found myself painting with words.
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Good for you 😀 … I pretty much just pottered around the house.
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Not unusual to me. I write in fits and starts. I finished a draft in February, and am just now beginning to outline something new.
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I start out slow and then build exponentially … good luck with your ‘something new’ 🙂
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Me, too–only I stopped writing for nearly a decade. Lots of things were going on in my head and life, and there was no room for writing. It wasn’t a right decision, because characters in the book I stranded let me know how their story continued and grew and evolved. Finally, I gave in and started writing again. I wrote 50k words the first month back!
I’m glad you didn’t decide to wait very long to start writing again. Sometimes we just need a break.
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Heh! They grew up without you. Love it 😀
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Well, I guess that’s what happens with my online writing/reading. (And here I am, starting back!) I have stopped my fiction writer before, but there’s usually been a reason from what I remember.
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I’ve petered out before, but never quite stopped, there’d always be at least a few paragraphs.
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or it may have been a lack of Vegemite in your diet! 🙂
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I knew there was a good reason! 😀 … hiya Cat, hope everything is OK in your world.
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I quit last month for a while, but it’s pretty clear to me why … 😦
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Yeah … 😦
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Yes, it happens to me too. I’m a freelance journalist, and each time I work on an article, it takes me a few days to ‘switch’ back to fiction. During those days, I simply can’t write. Not tired or anything, but my brain resists. Thankfully, so far, I’ve been able to break out of this non-writing mode in a few days. But if I have several articles in a row, I can’t write fiction for a while.
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Our brains certainly have minds of their own, don’t they? … I just got the most bizarre mental image of a brain’s brain!
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I don’t think that’s odd at all. It happens. Just like our darn “check engine” light all of a sudden coming on. Mechanic couldn’t find anything wrong with the engine. I stopped writing last November (actually way before then. I just continued writing to pay bills) and only started trudging back in April. As you can tell, I’m still not consistently back. Just like the “check engine” light that keeps coming on now and then.
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A glitch in the wiring! That’s what I have. An hitherto undiscovered, and exclusive to writers, brain glitch! 😀
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It doesn’t seem that strange. I’ve stopped writing before, too, but there was more reason behind it. I’m glad you’re getting back to it. I hope the ‘pause’ has been good for your creativity.
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I think it has certainly been good for my BIC and my WIBBOW 😀
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