IWSG: Vacations

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Vacations. So what's to be insecure about vacations? Vacations are for relaxing! Except...when you're a writer, there's that voice that tells you that a writer writes. All the time. Every day. How can you go on vacation?

My real vacation hasn't even started and already I've done almost no writing work in over a week, because of end-of-the-school year stuff, and a bit of holiday-making, and two spare teens staying with us for another week (and we've been having a blast, but one of them is sleeping in the den with my computer, and right now the whole herd is watching a movie on my computer while I write this post on an ancient laptop...). Is it any wonder I get a little worried when I think about writing and my REAL summer vacation plans?

I'm at a stressful time with my latest book anyway: I've sent it to my beta-readers, so there's not much I can do until feed-back starts to flow in. But I fret, and I struggle to pick up the next project (heck, I struggle to think what the next project should be!). I have too many unfinished projects right now, which worries me, so starting a new book seems like maybe a bad idea. And yet: working on a first draft is doable while traveling. Editing is not.

So the mind goes around in circles, always wondering if it's okay to take time off, and how much, and can I do something productive with that time (and what's so unproductive about travel, anyway?).

Basically, leave it to a writer to turn vacationing into another reason to freak out about work!

And there's the answer, I suspect: vacation is a time to take a break from working. If writing is a job, then yes, even a writer needs a holiday. I probably take more and longer holidays than I ought, but that's part of why I'm not a cubicle monkey. I like to travel, and I like to backpack, and writing gives me the time off to do it. So I will stop fretting and enjoy my vacations.

Oh, yeah. And maybe work on some short stories to market somewhere...

How about you? Do you worry about taking time off, and feel like you should be writing *literally* every day?