Taking time to smell the roses.

Sometimes the most important part about writing is, not.

I haven’t written a lick for the last week—-partly too busy, partly exhaustion, partly due to prioritizing for other important things in my life.

But all was not lost, because I was turning things over in my mind; thinking about the motivations and responses of my main protagonists, Odil and Zoë. Thinking about the pacing and threads of subplots I could pick up in the next section. After all of that, I now have fairly good idea of what the current chapter should include/touch upon. If I had ‘pushed ahead’ I think the story would have gone in another—not as satisfying—direction.

So, I’m learning. Before I used to beat myself up with guilt if I wasn’t actually writing, but I now know that the quiet times in between the actual writing always delivers interesting insights and reveals other directions and options regarding the story development. Stuff I would have missed, if I’d forced myself to focus on making the page count for the day.