Rest Breaks and Nonproductive Periods--How They Benefit a Book

I enjoy Loft teaching colleague Elizabeth Jarrett Andrews' occasional newsletter, PenFeathers. Her recent issue was about the challenges and benefits of rest and fallow periods in the life of the writer. She spoke about the difficulty they bring for some of us--and I immediately related. I am a poor patient, not enjoying enforced rest when ill, while my spouse loves it--the reading, the naps, the staring at nothing. I want to be up, to be productive. That trait has its blessings--I rarely get stuck with my writing goals--but easy acceptance of fallow periods is not one of them.

Sometimes life brings just what we need, not what we want. Post-Thanksgiving, I spent two weeks with covid. Nothing like some experience but still very unpleasant. Many days I could do nothing but stare. Our two dogs loved it--for once, I was motionless. Eventually, I was able to read and watch a movie. But write? No way. Everything got put on hold.

Some of you understand. To those who had it worse, I do feel lucky to that my covid experience was only two weeks and not as severe as some. After the first days of fever and glass-lined sore throat, I began contemplating the blessings of being forced to rest.

Around this time, I received an email accepting one of my short stories to an online literary journal. The editors also wanted to interview me, and they sent four or five rather challenging questions.

By challenging, I mean the questions forced me to go deeper into my reasons for writing the story. To what I was trying to say. Stuff I hadn't considered.

I knew the story was about a tricky decision that the narrator makes on the eve of his wife's death. I wanted to explore the idea of betrayal at a time when it's most abhorrent. Death is when one is supposed to hang in there, tend the dying beloved. What if the narrator couldn't or wouldn't? What if he were tempted to replace his life with another, more palatable version? Could I make this narrator someone who was understandable, not purely repulsive, for even contemplating such a decision?

You can read the story here, if you want. It's called "Breathing Room," and it's published in The Rappahannock Review.

The reason I mention this is because my enforced rest (covid) and the provocative questions sent by the Rappahannock Review editors caused me to take a step back and really think about the purpose of this story. Was I just interested in the foul deeds we humans can perpetrate when tempted? I knew my reason for writing was more than this. So I lay on the couch with my two puppies and stared at the story. Like staring at the winter landscape, the restful perspective began to teach me things about myself and my writing.

The editors caught a depth in the writing and they wanted to know how I went about getting it. As you may know, we writers often don't know! We just write, we do our best. But our readers, bless them, can teach us more. And so can the rest breaks or stepping back for a better look, whether voluntary (via questions) or enforced (via illness).

The interview is here, if you want to see why I admire these editors for their insightful questions and the gift of having to answer them.

Another aspect of my life on enforced rest right now is my garden. I'm dedicated to it; I have a four-season greenhouse (cold house) and use organic and biodynamic methods to have fresh greens ten months of the year. These two weeks past, temps have hit a low in the teens and the daily nurturing of the greens was set aside. I finally got to visit today. Under their row covers, inside the plastic greenhouse tunnel, there's still kale, Asian greens, escarole, some root vegetables, and the last salad greens. Winter hasn't killed them. In fact, the carrots are sweeter from the cold. Soon the last will be harvested for Christmas and the greenhouse will lie fallow until I plant again in February.

This is an enforced rest, according to the needs of light and temperature. Like my enforced rest from illness, it makes everything stop. Soil can regenerate during this time, too.

Enforced rest doesn't have to be the only way a writer benefits. There are also voluntary breaks. I would ask you--and myself--if there are rest breaks built into your writing life this month? Smart writers make room for them. Taking a voluntary rest break allows perspective to come back, much like the questions those editors sent me.

I always appreciated American writer Dorothy Allison's term "necessary boredom." Writers require periods of nonproductivity, of necessary boredom, to allow the deeper meaning of their work to emerge.