I Took A Break From Writing. Here Is What Happened

It’s not what I expected

I have been writing on Medium for almost 18 months. During those 18 months, I go through some lean patches when I stop writing for a couple of weeks. I will discuss what happened to me during the latest lean patch.

I was producing 4–6 articles a week in June. After publishing my article on June 29, I decided to take a small break from writing and focus on doing other stuff which I was postponing for a while.

Finally, after 11 eleven days of break, I decided to write an article. Here is what happened when I sat down to write:

I struggled to come up with an idea

I was trying to write an article yesterday and I could not think of writing about anything. I had been staring at my screen for 10 minutes before I wrote anything.

Although a break can be good, sometimes it breaks your flow.

When you are writing regularly, you don’t want to break the flow. Because when you are in flow, things seem effortless.

This is what I learned:

Even if you are not writing during a break, try to think about the topics you can write about.

Next time when I will take a break, I will try to brainstorm some ideas to write about. The point is — you should keep thinking about your next articles.

It took me some time to structure my article

As I am writing this article, I am not thinking too much. I am writing whatever is coming to my mind.

But when I was writing my article yesterday, I was struggling to think about sentences and paragraphs because I was article after a long time.

I feel like writing is like any other habit. If you stop doing a habit, you start losing progress.

Usually I write my articles in 30 minutes but it took me around 45 minutes to finish my article yesterday.

This is what I learned:

Even if you are not publishing articles, don’t stop writing at all. Try to write about your day in your journal. The goal is to keep writing, it does not matter where.

I felt less motivated

As I was writing my article yesterday, I did not feel the joy I felt earlier. Maybe because I was writing after a long time.

Conversely, I am feeling joy as I am writing this article.

Because I am enjoying writing this article, I am able to write it quickly.

This is what I learned:

If you stop doing any activity, you start losing motivation to do it.

I think brainstorming the ideas and writing journal can keep you (and me) motivated to write, even if you are taking a break.

Thanks for reading.