A long hiatus and now to restart the writing practice. You are all refreshed and ready to go. Yet when you sit down at the desk nothing. Blank pages as far as the eye can see. What went wrong?
Nothing really you are back at work. Now the natural resistance and critic in your head have also gone back to work also. You need some strategies to help you over come these two stepping stones. Let’s take off from where we left off in talking about getting our writing practice going .
Long Hiatus Restart Morning Routine
Start with your foundation. Get your morning routine going again. Depending on how long a hiatus you took, will depend on what you have to adjust or if you can just fall back into the work. If it has been a while, start back at a low level to build the habit. I like to use Tiny Habits in these cases. Starting with a very low bar for a week primes me to want more, while it sets the basic foundation I need to advance. After that week is over, I usually scale up rather quickly to a higher level.
You can also use your new habit building time as an opportunity to change things up and try a new approach. For instance you could make a new habit you have never had the time to try, like Jack Dorsey’s scheduling his work in blocks of time arranged throughout the week.
A writer’s habit might work out like this:
Monday Rough Drafts
Tuesday Freelancing (Pay Bills)
Wednesday Edit
Thursday Blog/social media
Friday Catch up loose ends
Saturday Rereading the week’s work
Sunday Short Stories
Yes, I did fill every day. Who ever heard of a Steven Pressfield (Do The Work) student who would go a day without some work done.
The point here is to give yourself some time to grow, learn something new and see what comes from it. No writer grows without some changes.
Long Hiatus Rust
What if your long hiatus is rusty beyond a simple restart of your old writing practice? How a bout a warm up then? Try a go at NaNoWriMo. It’s a great place to build your basic skills while you develop your mindset and habits all in one, and there are no real outside pressures or stress with the added bonus of a manuscript at the end.
The point here is to let your self adjust to the new demands you are putting on your body and mind. Just like running a marathon, a runner that has taken time away from training does not just run run the Boston Marathon. They first take the time to get themselves back into running form. The same can be said for us writers. We have to be in writing shape. That means slow down. Relax. Laugh a bit at the changes you find. Let yourself become the writer you are now, not the writer you once were. Your work and your body will thank you.
Retrain your brain
When you take off, so does your mind. Writing is really just a series of habits to we use to catch our thoughts and put them on paper. After a while the process is smooth enough that we hardly notice that we are doing any of them. Like typing, grammar, spelling, editing, proof reading, etc…. Even the most skilled typist will come back to the board with a reduced rate. Most teachers will take the time to dust off their skills before they step into a class.
The first step then is to retrain your brain’s mind set with a little brush up on basic skills like sentence structures, style, etc… It’s entirely possible you will be reteaching yourself how to write a book from page one to The End. Bloggers can find themselves looking up SEO answers. There is a lot to get a handle on in the world of writing. Take the time to let the gaps fill in.
Remember to avoid the shortcuts though. Keep your work professional. Cleanup your work before sending it off to your agent or hit publish on your blog. Reread those drafts from yesterday when you’re habit says you should. Do not just leave them to later. It’s the little details that mark the professional minded writer from the hack.
Never be afraid to learn something new. Always ask questions, especially to your brothers and sisters of the keyboard. Relearn the best practices. No matter where you look there is always some thing new to learn. Be like Rikki-Tikki-Tavi “Run and find out.” Be a good mongoose.
My take
The main thing for the writer returning from a long hiatus is that restarting their writing practice is doable. Just set your plan, relax, sit and start back work.
Photo by Andraz Lazic on Unsplash