Coming Back After A Break

I'm back! As of this weekend, I am officially back to writing every day after taking a month-long break in July. Most of the reasons for the break had little to do with my project; it was mostly about time and really having the space to think, but I will also admit that by the time I needed to step away, I was really only writing 1 word a day. Once I started feeling ready to come back into my work, I felt it wouldn't be as simple as opening my laptop one day and typing. It rarely is.

Coming back to your book after taking some time away, I think, takes an actual lead up. There's actual story things you have to get refamiliar with: the flow of the story, your characeter's voices. Hell, you may even need to go back and remember the plot. I never go into my story thinking it's going to be easy to pick up. For me, writing a book is not like riding a bike. It requires constant practice. And when I've taken a break, being back means coming back into the practice. Getting back up to spead.

This time, coming back to my story has taken work, as it usually does. I had to recommit to the behavior that makes writing easier for me: focusing on going to bed earlier, clearing my weekends, dedicating myself to my as-close-to-daily yoga mornings as I could to put myself in the right mindset. I also had to read again. My goal every year is to read 50 books, and I can tell you that as of a week ago, I was 11 books behind schedule (according to my Goodreads). I've almost never been that far behind, which means I've almost never been reading so little. Not even in law school.

I've been working myself back now for about 2 weeks, and only four days of that has been actual writing. In that time, I've deep cleaned my room and repositioned my yoga mat so that getting down on it feels a little more natural. I've finished 3 books (Quinta Brunson's autobiography She Memes Well, Angie Thomas' On the Come Up; which is going to be a Paramount movie; and Isabel Canas' The Hacienda (think: Mexican Gothic)). I've recommitted to Q Writes A Book and all that I want it to be. I'm still working on going to bed before midnight thirty, and once I manage that I really might be onto something. But all that to say that before I ever sat down, I've been doing work to get back in front of the computer.

In the last four days that I have written, I've completely changed my goal. I've spent a year trying to write the beginning of my book, and it wasn't working. Now, I've taken that first paragraph that I loved so much, but didn't feel was set right, and moved it to the end of the book. Now, I'm writing backwards, and I've written about 5,000 words. More than I had written in about 6 months prior to this break.

I'm still doing work too. Implementing a new sleep schedule is hard. Fitting in time to listen to even audiobooks is hard, let alone picking up a physical book. Strengthening my body daily is hard, but I feel like this book requires work from beginning to end, and if I want the reward of seeing it my hands at the end of next year, I have to be willing to put in the work that it requires every day.

Q.