Reviving Your Commitment to Downtime
A lot of the ideas discussed in this chapter for practicing the craft of writing are great fun to undertake, but they do require your time — something you will no doubt feel incredibly short on as you get your magazine-writing business up and running. And, truth be told, there's no reason to start out on a creative-writing exercise if you're just plain exhausted. You won't get very much done, you'll likely get frustrated, and you may lose sight of how much you love writing in the first place.
This is the time when the best way to practice your craft is to take a break from it. As with anything, when you obsess constantly about how to become a better magazine writer, you may end up driving yourself loony-tunes. Sometimes, the only way to improve at something is to let it go out of your mind for a while, to completely disengage from the process and give your brain time to relax and recharge.
If you're the type of person who tends to get caught up in things, you are likely to forget about your very real need for downtime. One way to solve this problem is by purchasing season tickets — for a baseball team, an opera house, whatever — that will force you to take breaks at regular intervals and focus on something other than writing.
After a day or two of doing no writing at all, you may not yet be ready to get back to work full-time, but you will likely find yourself more interested in the idea of taking on a creative-writing exercise or shooting a few photographs with story ideas in mind.
Remember that re-establishing this kind of self-motivation is a worthwhile goal in and of itself. It will almost always lead you back down the path toward being a better, more focused writer.
