If you've ever tried to write a novel, you know full well that taking time away from the computer is all part of the process. The best of us need short mental breaks throughout the day, the majority of us takes hours, days, or even weeks and months off between writing spurts.
You don't have to go far to find evidence that such breaks are vital, and nothing I say here is going to contradict that. Forcing yourself to write can result in as much or more time editing, or worse, total burn-out, and I don't recommend either. But waiting for a muse (even a task-oriented muse) can still stray into bad-habit territory.
If you wait too long, fading momentum is not your biggest concern.
Deadlines creep up, likely forcing you into a panicked rush that may short-change or completely circumvent the editing process, an oversight that can be much worse than a piece of sloppy, half-done dribble that a discerning audience can easily overlook in favor of otherwise solid writing.
Much like a boxer who stops going to the gym, your work can start to lose its shape when you put the proverbial pen down too long. In the intervening moments, especially when they stretch across periods of unconsciousness, your mind continues to chew the scenes of your work until they've been reduced to a soft gray cud that hardly resembles their original glory.
Perhaps most dangerous of all, as time passes, you have cause to consider other works, other scenes, and just how much you would really rather be doing anything else but finishing this book. That, without a doubt, is the number one killer for most first-time novelist (and 2nd-time and 3rd-time, at the very least).
If you look on the shelves today, you know that quality is not what keeps people from being published. Neither is an original setting, concept or suite of characters at all required. Writing all the way to the end, is. And the more gaps you give yourself, the less likely that end will come.
Now I opened by saying that I would not contradict the verified science that taking breaks is beneficial to the writer's mind. They are an absolute necessity. So is drinking water to someone working outdoors in the summer; it doesn't mean they can't drown.
If you've gone at least a week without writing and there isn't a direct cause (flu, death in the family, new apartment, radiation granted you superpowers, etc), force yourself to sit still for one hour and try to write. Even if it isn't related to the overall work, even if it isn't the next scene, try to write, and if at all possible, try to write something related to the work in question.
If you're lucky, the sheer reminder of routine will let you unplug all the ideas that started welling up during the dry spell of the week prior. If you're average, you'll need more than that to get you going.
If you're 15 minutes into your mandatory writing hour and there's hardly more than "The" on the page, take a step back and pen something you have an easier time with: a brief character bio for the new romantic lead you're about to introduce, a mock personal ad from the same, a treatise on why you chose a straight male artist with a lisp just to buck the stereotype: anything to un-stick your brain.
What you write may never show up in the final work, but don't throw it out. It can give you good perspective later if you feel like you've lost a sense of the character's motivations and voice. It may even become a regular thing.
In Steven Brust's Brokedown Palace, he's dotted little Interludes into the line of the regular story. These 2-5 page sub-chapters are minor fairy tales in and of themselves, and the first few seem completely unrelated to the scene at hand (with perhaps some minor symmetry if you squint just right).
Later, these same interludes begin to suggest a connection between the lineage of the characters and the surreal events of the fable, speaking to darker, mystic origins behind an otherwise typical individual.
What could have started as "de-glue my brain" extemporanea instead led to not only refreshing "breather" chapters between otherwise heavy subject matter, but also to a subtle sub-plot that otherwise might have seemed forced within the context of the rest of the work.
Back to the subject of gaps, if you write with a day job, one week might be a regular outage period for writing. One month, then, should become your warning flag. If your writing pattern is such that you can go an entire year without penning a word, you should probably consider the possibility that writing is simply not your thing, at least at this point in your life.
If all you manage to get out when you realize it's "been too long" again is a short snippet of a scene, interlude, or even just some fun dialog that your characters may never actually use (writing your major characters into a nonsensical bar scene environment, for instance), don't be discouraged. Keeping that fire from going out is what matters most.
Sooner or later, either you'll hit your stride again, or you'll get sick of putting out 1000 words for nothing every other weekend and force yourself to muddle through a more sizable portion. At the very least, it can help you decide sooner if the work you're working on is one you really want to do at all.
If you set it aside with the promise of what it might one day be, it can fester forever in silence. If you actually force yourself to give attention to it on a regular basis, you'll know before too long if it's something you really want to bother with at all.
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