Sometimes You Need to Stop Writing: 3 Authors on the Sacred Pause
Liminal space is the time between what was and what’s to come, and it’s really common in the writer’s life. Whether it’s a personal liminal space or a creative one, floating in that in-between can bring up a lot of feelings, throw us off routines, and generally leave us with a sense of groundlessness. But we can also harness some of its medicine when we’re conscious of the season we’re in. Today, I’m sharing how three writers have approached these breaks in their routine, and the insights you can apply to your own creative practice.
Example 1: Doing Less to Spark More Joy
For Alex Elle, 2023 was all about recovering from her book launch. She went on walks, drank chai, read fiction, and inevitably, someone would ask a version of “What’s next?” And when she replied with something like “I’m staying home” or “I’m enjoying not having anything to do” or “I’m not writing at all,” she was met with confusion. Facing the inevitable discomfort when you’re not behaving the way people assume you should feels both hard and necessary.
“People would be taken aback. They'd look at me strangely—surprised that I would even dare not have the stuff to do or energy to expel. It felt like they were thinking me not doing anything couldn't possibly spark joy—but it indeed did.”
Example 2: Create Conditions
Author of the memoir BODY FULL OF STARS, Molly Caro May says the pause is a way to “create conditions.” In a newsletter, she told the story about how she had planned a sabbatical—her whole family was going to spend a month in Costa Rica, and she planned to spend part of that time alone. There she was, exhausted after flying in, and literally went to the closest hotel near the airport, not expecting anything all that inspiring to happen, and then she goes on to describe how insights just started coming one after the other while she was lying on her bed in her underwear.
“I had intentionally brought no distractions: no email, no books, no articles to read, no doing-things, no podcasts, no small or big work tasks, no lists, no organizing intentions, nothing. That was it. It sounds easy. It wasn’t. Does this tape also run in your heart? It feels wrong to pause. Not everyone gets to pause like this. How could I pause when the world is disintegrating? How could I abandon my responsibilities? Is that okay to do? Am I bad person if I do it? Am I hurting other people if I do it? Am I not staying responsible to the world?”
These are questions that all of us wrestle with, and she went on to remind that a sabbatical doesn’t have to look like flying to another country. Another quote, she says “sabbatical can be anywhere: short, long, in your hometown, away. But it does necessitate space, boundaries, support and a willingness to weather the particular-to-you consequences of doing so.” This reminded me of my summer of white space in 2023. I didn’t go anywhere. But I did create space in my days (and you can listen to the episodes about that), and I did create boundaries around my time, and what I was saying yes and no to, and that, over months and months, is now bearing fruit. This story has a stronger message in the sense that the Pause was necessitated by a more extreme wake-up call with her health. Cautioning against burnout, Molly describes “The Pause” as a “time-proven, ancient, build-in mechanism for well-being.” Then she goes on to write:
“We are a world devoid of pauses. Not pausing also gets spun as noble, especially in the liberal circles (of which I am a part). Trust me, I’ve done it. I’ve stayed on top of every news soundbite and read all the things and refused to let myself enjoy anything (b/c others are suffering) and stayed up until midnight just to be informed and not ‘rest’ on important things. Where did that get me? In the ER with an emergency blood transfusion. Sometimes, The Pause gets forced upon us. Not pausing is not noble. It harms you and, by extension, harms everyone.”
Example 3: Make Space, Not Time
On the long and winding slog of book writing, Katherine May offers plain yet profound advice: “Make space, not time.”
“A book takes space, and not time. You need to make room for it, but it shrivels under any goals that are too specific. I’ve learned over decades (and this is still very much a work in progress) that you need to divorce yourself from the mentality of an office worker, and instead think about creating space in which books can weave themselves. This might mean blocking out mornings to write, but it might also mean always having a notebook to hand so that you can jot down ideas, getting into a habit of writing down your dreams each morning, or concertedly spending more time watching movies rather than TV quiz shows. For me, it means taking a lot of walks. These are the kind of things that make the space for a book to grow by itself, and to become wilder and richer than it would through mere planning.”
This, to me, is probably the most elegant way to describe ‘writing in the margins,’ which I’ve been talking about for a decade. She gives some very specific ways to write in this more free-flowing way, and acknowledges the necessity of being more cyclical essentially. “Divorce yourself from the mentality of an office worker.” – I’ve shared a number of times how I often have days where I’m really productive. I’m in creative flow for hours and it’s just a great writing day. And then, the next day, my brain feels like mush. Sometimes I don’t even like sitting at the computer, and where the day before I was typing away, I just feel this sense of needing a lot of rest in-between those generative sessions. And that’s how books and other writing we might do quote ‘weave themselves’ through our days, not because we’ve forced ourselves to sit in a chair and write a certain number of words, but because we’ve made the space, both mentally and physically to create the conditions we need to actually write.
6 Ways to Find Pause in Daily Life
Pausing is something we need to take responsibility for, and we can always start in the mundane. As wonderful as it would be to go on an international sabbatical and physically leave our homes, the reality is that most of our work is done within the space of our regular routines. Our daily choices can have a huge impact on our creativity.
Pausing might look like:
Building in 3-5 minute breaks during your day to take deep breaths or listen to a brief meditation.
Editing poems one day and writing a list of words the next, honoring the need for restoration in-between .
Printing out a work-in-progress and lovingly placing it aside for a few days, a week, or a month. This is one of those examples for creating conditions—where you’re essentially saying, I want to read you. I’m going to get there, and I’m printing it out as one small action to move forward when the time is right.
Going for a walk around the block without your earbuds and seeing what you notice. Or similarly, closing your eyes in the car for a few minutes, without listening to anything, while you’re in the school pick-up line.
Not writing anything for as long as you need to.
Spending the night at a local hotel, or taking yourself to a coffee shop every other week to write or read or edit.
As a gentle reminder, sacred pauses or liminal spaces aren’t just obstacles on the way to completing a manuscript, they play an essential role in cultivating a sustainable practice, offering things like novelty, down time, deep rest, and creative connections. Don’t forget that we are nature, and we need these winters in our practice, no matter the time of year.
I recently came across an Icelandic word—gluggaveður—that literally translates to “window weather,” where you delight in staying warm and cozy and noticing the outside world from the comfort of your home. Whether it’s pausing, slowing down, rest—to me it’s all part of the same ecosystem. This idea that as humans and also as writers, our life needs pauses. It’s a necessary part of nature, and also incredibly vital to our work.
