How to Take a Writing Break: A Guide for Mothers

Encouraging wisdom from our community

I have a superstition that if I don’t buy my son bigger clothes, he will stay stuck at his current size. Maybe it’s because my son is on the small end, but some part of my brain thinks it’s the oversized clothes that prompt his body to stretch into a more solid form, and if I want to be a good mom, I need to make sure to have the next size waiting for him. I know it’s not rational, but I have a similar superstition about writing. When I send a manuscript to my agent, part of me worries that if I’m not working on a project or planning the next one, my inner writer might shrivel and die or my agent won’t sell your manuscript, because somehow I’m not actively proving myself. My wiser self knows my son is growing, even when it’s happening so slowly that I can’t see it, and I’m making progress as a writer, even when I take breaks.

Lately, I’ve gotten a few messages from mothers who feel guilty because they aren't writing (FOR VERY GOOD REASONS), and while my job is technically to encourage them to write, I also want to help them feel more confident about taking a break too. The truth is…

We all need writing breaks.

Mothers especially need unapologetic writing breaks.

Know When to Take a Break

Writer

Noha Beshir

says, “My advice for others is to take the break, and give yourself permission sooner than I did! Your mind and body need to refresh. We are not machines. I wonder sometimes if I would have been ready to go back to writing sooner if I'd given myself permission to stop sooner.”

Whether you’re in the intense newborn days or farther along and juggling more responsibilities, there are many reasons to take a writing break. For some of us, those early days are wildly creative. For others, the urge to have a project that’s all your own comes later. For many of us, it’s a conflicted mess, we want to write, but we can’t, and yet we feel like we should be able to figure out a way.

Recalling her early days as a mom, picture-book author

Julie Falatko

says, “I remember wanting so much to work on stories, and I just couldn’t get to it. I felt like I was standing in a fog, and far off in the distance, I could see myself. I’d wave at her, and yell, ‘I miss you!’ She’d yell back that she’d see me again someday. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever really be able to write in the way I wanted to.”

Noha Beshir

had a similar experience saying, “I kept trying to write early on, even as my brain gradually turned to mush, especially after baby number 2, who NEVER SLEPT…It just became untenable. I would sit to write when I should really be using that precious free time to nap or eat or just blissfully sit in silence, or even to read. I was empty. What do you tap into, how do you produce, when you're empty?”

Before I was a mother, I once heard someone talking on a podcast about how her childcare was always evolving. She homeschooled for a year, had a nanny for a year, did public school for a year, and didn’t know what the next year would look like. It sounded chaotic to my novice ears, but now I realize she was saying that her daughter’s needs were always changing, so her childcare plan was always changing. Now I totally get that. I’ve had everything between 0-40 hours of childcare each week, and the amount of client work and writing I can do varies wildly depending on how much alone time I get.

Our country often acts like you can “set it and forget it” with childcare. Make a plan, schedule the childcare, and then do the work. We tend to take all the awful, upside-down messages we get about creativity and productivity and turn them on ourselves. We swallow them whole and don’t even realize we might have our own ideas about what it means to be a mother and a writer. Needs change. People get sick (a lot). Our energy levels and interests evolve. We may need to take adapt and take writing breaks many times throughout motherhood, and it helps to go in knowing that, instead of blaming ourselves for not being able to make it work when we expected we would have it all figured out by now.

As

Julie Falatko

says, “The biggest thing for me was learning to trust myself. I had to learn to take myself seriously. And then, once I did, I could take a break whenever I had to, because I trusted myself enough to know I’d get back to the story.” Audio-book narrator

Jess Moran

stopped working as a teacher when her eldest was born. For her, becoming a mother unlocked words and feelings and she felt pulled to write in a way she hadn’t before. But as her kids grew older, she got interrupted more, and she found it harder to hear the words she had once heard, so her creative practice evolved alongside her children.

Humorist

Julie Vick

took a couple years off writing creatively after having her first child. She says, “At the time, I think I felt anxious about taking a break and was trying to find ways to get writing time again, but in retrospect, I think it was good for my writing to step back for a little while. When I did start writing again I started to write about parenting and also focus more on writing humor because it was something I could do in short spurts of time. Taking some time away made me more motivated to write when I got back to it.”

Reimagine What It Means to Take a Break

I hope hearing from other mothers who have taken breaks will give you permission to experiment and do whatever is right for you. Writing breaks can be a time for rest and growth, if we let them.

Writer

Christián

Pena’s writing changed dramatically when she became a mother, and taking a break helped her evolve as an artist. “Sometimes not writing is part of the writing process.” While

Julie Vick

says, “I think I had the ‘You Have to Write Every Day’ voices in my head for a long time and now I've realized that there are lots of different ways to be a writer and breaks are often healthy and more productive for my writing.”

Noha Beshir

says, “When I finally made peace with giving myself a break, I see the permission I finally gave myself as self love, and recognition of my humanity. I stopped judging myself for wasting free time watching tv, or talking to a friend, or sleeping. I admitted that motherhood in our modern society is nearly impossible, as opposed to looking in the mirror and finding myself wanting. And then I rested. And I got healthier as a result, and filled my cup a bit.” The result? “Without the pressure to produce, I would randomly still find myself suddenly inspired. I have notebooks of half written lines and vignettes from those 6 years, so the creativity came to me when I didn't force it. But I was careful not to take those vignettes and turn them into a new project - inadvertently reintroducing the stress of a deadline.”

Jess Moran

recommends mothers try to keep writing, but to keep an open mind about what that might look like, saying “Go gently with yourself. On the days you beat yourself up for ‘not accomplishing enough’ whether as a mother or a writer or as a mother-writer, take a breath. Whisper that the words will come again, even if in different shapes. Your shape has changed with the child you bore, and so will the languages you keep. I recommend writing however and whenever you can rather than simply stopping. When there are no words, walk outside and find them. Let them come as nurse or feed solids at the table. In between read-alouds and at the zoo. When you want to cry and are crying and can't seem to stop. In your anger or anxiety or joy. Write.”

I hope one day you’ll find the time and energy to write. But it’s ok if it’s not now! Living, witnessing, believing, and reimagining the future are all vital to having something to write about. Maybe you'll take notes along the way. Maybe not. But I know when the time is right, you'll have something important to say and you'll bring all the skills you've developed in motherhood (including creativity) to your writing.

We are all cheering you on!

Takeaways

Be intentional about your time and energy.

Give yourself permission to take a break whenever you need it.

Trust that you are still a writer even when you’re not writing.

Let your experiences shape your work.

Share more in the comments. Your experience may encourage someone else to have more compassion for themselves!

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