The clocks went forward last night. I think we are a week later than the US. I’m in Spain, and my body knows something is off – that strange, slightly seasick feeling of time being rearranged while you slept. I sort of feel that someone came in and stole an hour without my agreement. Anyway, here I am, my brain feels discombobulated. That’s the only word for it. Discombobulated.
It seems fitting, actually. Because March has been a month of feeling out of sync with myself in all kinds of ways.
A series of lurgies laid me low (since December and maybe earlier). And then, just when I thought I was through it, almost five weeks of a cough and cold moved in and made itself at home. I was wiped out with the kind of tired that drags you down into the sludge. But of course, it is the body’s way of saying you need to stop, or I will make you.
And the strangest thing happened. My companion, my journal, the thing I look to when I need to express myself, looked like an alien, and the page went quiet. Not silent – not completely. But the easy, natural reaching for my journal that I’ve had for so many years? It wasn’t there. Writing felt like lifting something heavy. Even thinking about my novel felt like standing at the bottom of a very long staircase with no particular conviction that there was anything worth climbing towards.
So I didn’t; instead, I listened to my body, and I rested. I was gentle with myself, which, if you know me at all, you’ll know doesn’t always come naturally.
You may know this feeling. Maybe not from illness, from grief, or upheaval, or one of those seasons of life where everything takes more than you have to give. Maybe you’re in it right now – I call it the messy middle.
The journal stayed shut, and it gave me the side eye as everything went quiet. And then came the guilt about the quiet. And then came the stories – I’ve lost it. I’ll never get it back. How do I start again? What do I write about? Blah, blah, blah…
So, a little note from the other side of many weeks of lurgy and one stolen hour – you haven’t lost it.
What a writing break actually is
We tend to think of breaks from writing as failures of discipline, commitment, or creative identity. But I’ve come to think of them differently.
When you’re ill, your body is doing extraordinary work – it’s healing, and that is magical. When you’re grieving, your whole system is processing something enormous. When life gets loud and chaotic and relentless, your nervous system is managing more than you can see. And all of this is ok.
The truth is, when you are processing stuff, sometimes there is no spare energy for writing. And that’s wisdom. The body knows what it needs, and all you need to do is stop beating yourself up and listen to what your body wants instead. I must make a note of this wisdom for next time…
A break from writing is not the opposite of writing. It’s part of the same continuous relationship with yourself – just a different part. Like the fallow season, if you like. The field is resting before it’s ready to grow vegetables again. Which seems apt, as we have come out of winter and supposedly are in spring. Can someone tell the weather?
Your stories didn’t go anywhere, your voice didn’t disappear, and the desire to write in your journal didn’t go on holiday. Your journal was waiting for you. Patiently, as good things tend to do.
The one thing not to do
Don’t make re-entry a performance; it doesn’t need you to create some brilliant strategic plan.
This is the trap I see writers fall into time and again – and I’ve fallen into it myself more times than I’d like to admit. The break ends, the energy returns, and suddenly there’s this pressure to come back properly. To write something significant, perhaps finish a chapter of a book or write about your deepest feelings. You may feel that you need to make up for lost time with some grand creative statement that justifies the silence.
Don’t.
Writing doesn’t need a grand entrance. It just needs you to show up – quietly, without fanfare, without the weight of everything you didn’t write while you were away.
Come back small, gently, perhaps just one word or sentence. Grab a cuppa and put pen to paper – the words will come back. I always start with the mundane, and then the magic flows as if you have never been away.
How to come back
If you’re finding your way back to journaling after a break – however long, however caused – here are the things that help me.
Start with what’s true right now. Not what you should be writing about, or where you left off. Just this moment. Like me, your clocks may have gone forward, and your body may feel strange. The light is doing something different outside the window – it’s dark again. Begin there.
Write badly on purpose. Give yourself explicit permission to produce something terrible. A paragraph that goes nowhere. A sentence that doesn’t make sense. Terrible writing still counts. Terrible writing still gets the pen moving, which is the only thing that matters right now.
Five minutes. Not a one-hour session, or a whole fancy practice. Five minutes, and then you can stop. Five minutes is enough to remember that the page is still there, still yours, still safe – just as it always was. And the good news is that it won’t tell you off.
Don’t look back yet. Not at old journal entries, not at the novel, not at whatever you were working on before the break. Eyes forward, or eyes on the present moment. Looking back can come later, when you’re ready to revisit and reflect.
Be as gentle with yourself as you would be with someone you love. This one is the hardest and the most important. You wouldn’t tell a friend recovering from five weeks of illness to pull themselves together and get writing. You’d make them tea, tell them the words will come back, and to just be kind to themselves. You’d mean it, because it would be true.
Mean it for yourself too.
What I’m doing today
I’m writing this.
That’s it. That’s my whole grand return to writing – this piece, these words, this feeling of a discombobulated Sunday morning in Spain with the clocks messing up my system and right now Tommy barking because it is time for a walk in the cold.
It’s not much. But it’s something. And something, after a long quiet, is everything.
Next Sunday, we begin a whole month together exploring Acceptance – a theme that feels, I have to say, entirely perfect for where I am right now. I’ll be in your inbox with the first piece then.
For now, if you’ve been away from your journal or any writing, consider this your friendly invitation back. Remember, you don’t have to push yourself; this isn’t a challenge, simply an open door, and me on the other side of it, also finding my way back, one imperfect, messy word at a time.
Did I find it hard to write this morning? Yes, but I am pleased that I started and I kept it short.
Your journal and a fresh page will be there when you’re ready. It always is.
With love, Dale – The Word Alchemist
You don’t have to write well today. You just have to write.
