An overactive Inner Critic.
A feeling of the blues about one's work.
A sense of deep depletion, despite enough sleep and exercise.
Any of these sound familiar?
Yesterday I was working on a chapter revision. After about the fourth draft--making changes, printing out a new version, reading outloud and editing again, then inputting the changes--I noticed I was making it worse. This is a sticky chapter, an important one, right at the end of the first act. Everything is supposed to go down.
It was. But not in the story--in my own work on it.
I had a deadline. But I wondered, was it better to take a break now, despite all the urgency of my deadline, and fill the creative well?