This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast. I hope you enjoy

this week's episode should you take a break from your writing? Writers

are supposed to write.

That's just how it works.

But should you ever take a break from your writing?

Is that just code for quitting?

Is it a sign that you're copping to your own laziness or fear, or that you're really

not a disciplined serious writer?

The short answer is, who only you know and the more general answer is that at some point for almost all writers taking a break from your writing becomes valuable and perhaps even necessary.

I dare say more writers than usual have been asking this question.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, I heard from many writers who just couldn't quite find it in themselves to write.

And in the months that followed all the way through 2021, I started seeing more and more writers publicly talking

about how taking a break from writing was something they were focusing on, perhaps even

for the first time in their careers. I was among those writers as I've discussed previously for me

the challenges of 2020 came hard on the heels of what was already a difficult writing period in my life.

By the time 2021 rolled around, I made the decision to give myself a year-long conscious sabbatical from writing my fiction.

It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made, but I believe it was also one of the best

decisions.

Toward the end of last year, I received an email

from La Brava Altonia, which echoed the difficulties

and concerns that I feel are quite prevalent now.

La Bravo wrote eloquently of struggling with narrative fiction, including the guilt, that so often, if so senselessly, dogs us when we're experiencing writer's block. The email said, recently, I've

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