Jeremy C Kester

Until today I was off work leading into and through the weekend. It was a planned few days off where I was going to spend constructive and quality time with my wife. But then something else happened: I decided to ignore my side jobs, writing and blogging.

Last Thursday I posted my weekly poem, but then I allowed myself to go dark. A few hundred words also graced the pages of my WIPs on my fiction projects, but I otherwise backed away from the exercise of writing after that. I had realized that I needed a break from more than just my day job. So I took one.

Struggle has followed me this year with regards to my writing. Although I have been putting a valiant effort so far in pushing for a greater regularity in my blog and with writing in that regard, my last published book was back in December of 2016. A year ago. The Dangerous Life of Agnes Pyle.

Sure, I posted a larger short story to my site with Into Fire’s Den, but that story had been written long before I finished Agnes Pyle and had been waiting for me to drop it.

But besides all that, I have felt no closer to releasing my next book than I was after last December. While this is true only in the emotional part, that feeling ignores all fact and reason. In essence, it became the only truth. Now some number over 80,000 words written this year isn’t evidence of not being closer. Little does volume mean to me if I don’t feel close to being ready to convert those words into a ready, publishable manuscript.

Leading up to this weekend, that feeling has grown, realizing that with it was a waning energy towards maintaining my blog. I needed to step away willingly before I ended up overwhelming myself and stepping away by breaking down and giving it up. Again.

I needed a few days away from the pressure of writing. To understand it and myself better. What I am after in writing.

Now I am back at it. Maybe I am close to a finished book; maybe I am not. What I am certain of now is that I will keep trying to move forward, even if every so often I need to sit for a bit to check my bearings.