When I take short breaks, I go outside for a walk to get fresh air or do something such as organize, clean, or exercise to get my mind off the thing that I’m struggling with. I do something where my mind is focused on something else aside from the story I’m writing so that I can get a new perspective on it when I return.
Once I do that, it’s as if I’m looking at the story from a new mindset. I’m suddenly able to fill in the gaps and clarify concepts. I might even get an epiphany that can change the course of the story and improve it.
It’s hard to take breaks sometimes because we want to finish what we’ve started. There’s a negative feeling associated with leaving something unfinished. It’s as if it’ll be worse off if we don’t finish it or that it won’t get done.
Perhaps it’s one of those things where we were taught from an early age that we had to finish our homework before we could take a break or get a reward (such as watching TV or going outside). If we say that we’re going to finish it later, the likelihood of us doing so will be curtailed by other things that come up throughout the day.
But with writing, taking a break can lead to creative inspiration and finding solutions. Writing requires a plethora of ideas, many of which won’t be used by the time the story/work is done (by work, I mean essay, letter, report, etc.).
In stepping away from a work, it lets new ideas formulate in a subconscious way. It’s as if we can see the whole picture again–the outline–the mind map–rather than a specific idea that we got hung up on.
There comes a point where something isn’t working and we can’t progress in our work. Instead of fixating on what we’re stuck on, we need to step away, to take a short break, so that we can see the other ideas that we unwittingly ignored.
When we return to our work, we might get that feeling of “why didn’t I think of that in the first place?” or “how could I have not seen that?” And the simple answer is that we’re not cognizant of the solutions/ideas until we stop what we’re doing and let them in.
Fallton Havenstonne 