Your Book (and your brain) Need to Breathe

I want to talk about giving your manuscript time and space to breathe.
 
Because sometimes it’s the time away from your manuscript that is actually the most valuable time. Even when you’re just getting started, pecking away at the keys as you piece together this part of the story with that one, you can benefit from time away from your computer.

Later, it's even more important. After you’ve been through a couple of revisions. That’s when your book needs to breathe. That’s when you need to take a breather yourself.
 
Without time and space, the really good stuff is unlikely to make an appearance. It might be there, under the surface, but you probably won’t see it because your head is stuck in a whirl of details.

If you give yourself some time and space, those ideas will come up for air. Lightning will strike when you’re doing dishes or driving to an appointment or simply staring at the ceiling while listening to music. Something in the magical, whimsical territory of your brain will click into place, and important aspects of your story will become so obvious and imperative that you whisper, How did I not think of this before?
 
With a bit of space (in the form of downtime), you'll give your brain what it needs to take those deep dives into character, to unearth the plot holes and fill them with wondrous, juicy details, and to create some truly imaginative, clever stuff.
 
This is why I say don’t rush. Embrace the time off. Embrace the pause. Yes, we all want another book that we can launch into the stratosphere as soon as possible, but what if we gave it the time it deserves? The air it needs to breathe. The space that will allow it to unfold its wings and fly?
 
In order to stand out from the burgeoning self-published crowd, we need to produce quality work—the kind of work that requires space to breathe.