The Art of Stopping

Confession: I'm a workaholic.

Aside from my creative writer side, I have a very type-A personality. I thrive on goals and deadlines, self-imposed or otherwise. I like to always have something going on, and I write, edit or query pretty much every day (in addition to working more than full time and dealing with kids, husband and multiple pets). But every now and then I have to do something that's rather hard for me. I just have to stop.

So, I haven't posted in a while because I needed to replenish a bit. Work has been stressful, and I've been sick several times this year, and I found myself in the unusual (for me) position of not knowing what writing project I wanted to work on. I was querying one book, and immediately started a new one, which I usually do to distract myself from querying. Then I got some great feedback from a couple agents on the book I was querying, and suddenly I went into a bit of a tailspin. Should I edit? Should I push through and finish the first draft of my current WIP? I really just wasn't sure.

Thus, I stopped. I recognized that I needed to really make myself take a long break and just BE. Which is very unnatural for me, but I did it for several weeks. I was lazy and watched lots of Buffy, Vampire Diaries, Game of Thrones and Castle. And after a bit I started to feel back to normal, and the feeling got stronger, and now I think I'm almost back to where I need to be.

I've decided to pause on the new WIP and work on edits on two books. Then, querying shall begin anew! I got great responses from agents and writers alike on these, and I know the areas I need to work on. So, that's the plan. What have you been doing lately?