A few weeks ago I took a Sabbath rest from my writing. I do this every seven weeks to give my brain and fingers and stories a rest, so I can come back fresh and ready, and I can protect against burnout.
Normally I use those “working” hours to learn something new or just read and relax or work on other arts and crafts that I don’t normally have time to do. But this Sabbath was the last one before my boys went back to school. So I decided to do something different. I decided to take an entire hour each day and just spend it with each of my boys, individually.
In a household as large as mine, I don’t often have the opportunity to hang out with my boys alone. So I wasn’t even sure what we would do, but I scheduled the time and let them know it was coming. I didn’t have to worry about making plans, because they already had their own plans.
The oldest was first. He wanted to do a puzzle for the first half hour, and then he wanted to write a picture book story together, where he would supply the picture and I would write a story for each page. It was a fun collaboration project that we both really enjoyed and are finishing up soon.
The second-oldest just wanted to do puzzles the whole time, so we talked about his upcoming year of school and how he’ll be in the first grade and whether he thinks he’ll have any of his friends in his class. The third-oldest wanted to do puzzles and read together, which was just fine by me, again. The 3-year-old twins didn’t make it a whole hour (more like 15 minutes), but they just wanted to talk—or ask questions about everything in the world until my eyes glazed over and I started answering, “I don’t know. I don’t know, baby.”
What I found during that time is that my boys became much more connected to me and much more compliant when they burst into the room later and I had to tell them that I was working hard to learn a new program or I was right in the middle of reading a book that I wanted to finish before the week was up, so they needed to shut the door on their way back out. They understood me better. I understood them better. We reestablished our connection.
What I found, coming back from that time of connection, is that my art was richer for the time we had spent together.
There is something about getting out of your normal routine, changing things up a bit, that can make you much more creative when you come back to the drawing board.
So many people nurse the fear that if they give up a whole week of writing, they will lose momentum on whatever project they’ve got going. I felt this way, too, in the beginning. Because I post a blog every Monday, and I was steadily growing an audience around that blog, wouldn’t I lose some of that audience if I had a Monday where a blog didn’t post?
But statistics (which I don’t always like to look at anyway) didn’t tell that story. In fact, my statistics continued to grow steadily.
And I felt much more energized as a writer for my week away from the keyboard.
When we are writers who work from home and don’t go into offices and only do this pursuit, it’s easy to slip into a more-than-full-time work pace, where we fill all the margins with work, because every moment is precious and needed. But working day in and day out, five days a week or seven days a week for the rest of our lives, with no rests in between, can lead us more surely into burnout than success.
If we’re parents, that means that our days are already filled with all the activity that children bring, and we don’t normally get a day off from that. We’re always on. Always on in our family, always on in our work, always on in our lives.
So rest time is doubly important for those who are doing it with children in tow.
Resting from our week makes us more able to do great work. Connecting with our children means we can more effectively connect with our art. We open greater depths in our hearts, which spills out into our work, when we are living life with our whole heart.
If it feels hard to find time for a Sabbath in your normal work load, here are some suggestions:
1. Begin by doubling up one week.
I did this at the beginning of my Sabbath practice. If I had anything that was regularly scheduled, I would double up on it the week before the Sabbath. In other words, the week before my Sabbath rest, I would write two blogs and four story installments and 12,000 words on that book instead of just 6,000. This won’t work indefinitely (and isn’t really the point), but for those just starting out, it can provide a sort of security blanket, because they’ve still produced the same amount of regular content. Just don’t try this for long.
2. Be okay with leaving something unfinished.
I’ve taken several Sabbath weeks this year. Before only one of them (the most recent one) was I able to finish a book’s rough draft in a nice and tidy spot. All the other times I left a book hanging right in the middle of it. This is a scary thing to do, because what if we don’t get back and finish it? What if there’s a noticeable snag in the draft that makes people wonder what exactly happened there?
These are all valid concerns. But they’re really unnecessary. Because, most of the time, what I’ve found is that when I come back from my Sabbath week, I’m that much more able to tackle that plot line again, sometimes with better ideas. That’s because leaving a story for a Sabbath rest doesn’t mean that story is out of our subconscious. Our subconscious often works things out without our even knowing, so giving it space can be good.
3. Use the week to learn something new.
Some people don’t like doing nothing. So learn something new. Spend the week learning about how to effectively market a book. Teach yourself how to sew. Pick up an old project from college and see if you can make it readable. There’s always so, so much to learn as authors, and exercising a Sabbath week doesn’t mean that we can’t still grow as writers and authors.
4. Hang out with the kids.
There’s so much inspirational creativity in our children. When we spend more time with them, some of that creativity becomes ours. We become better at what we do because of the time we take hanging out with our kids. It makes us better parents, and it makes us better writers.
And it’s so valuable to teach our children the beauty of rest. We live in such a rush-rush-rush world, and if we can model what it looks like to take a whole week off work and not worry about the money or what’s going to happen after this one week, they will learn Sabbath rest is something that’s not only possible but something that’s desirable.
5. But try not to write.
Now. I still wrote in my journal during my Sabbath, because it’s not a journal that will ever see the light of day. It’s just my unloading journal. So this wasn’t work, it was survival. I feel better when I’ve started my morning writing 800 words to get things off my chest. I could approach my Sabbath in the right frame of mind because of it.
Writing work should be put on hold for the whole seven days.
I hope you try it. I would love to hear how it goes.
