My how time flies...when your not writing.

Last weekend was nine weeks since I had written anything new. I finished revising act one, then nothing. Every night for two weeks after that my fingers hovered over my trusty keyboard and nothing. Nothing except cutting words, over 20,000 in fact.

Lets not think about how many hours it took to write those 20,000 words (30-40) that at one time I thought were poetic, beautiful and necessary. But guess what, they weren't. Okay...moving on.

So I cut a 1/4 of my novel out, not a problem, just rewrite it. Let's think, what should I write? After all I've read every  "how to" book lately to help me hone in my craft. I am a novice after all. Let's see what have I learned? Don't use adverbs, show don't tell. Don't fill in with back story, flash backs or dreams....don't do this....make sure to do that..... AAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

So while trying to follow all the rules I ended up following none, because I wasn't writing. I felt overwhelmed. Now I'm not saying a person should not read books to help themselves, because I have learned a lot of valuable information form these books. I just need to take them in moderation.

Now here is the kicker, even though I wanted a break from my story and the work, I was miserable not writing. After a few days the voices in my head  my characters wouldn't shut up. I'm not really sure what I've learned from my little hiatus, if anything, but back into the trenches I go. Before writing this post I added over 1600 words to my manuscript. Man, I forgot how good it felt and remembered why I started writing in the first place.