After last month’s update, it’ll likely come as little shock to you when I say, throughout the month of July, I sat down to write approximately zero times. And I don’t regret a single moment of my not writing. Let’s talk a bit about that. What it means to be a writer who isn’t actively writing. Can I even claim the title, the profession, if I am not actively working towards my next publication date, my next physical novel?

I hope you’ve got a lovely cup of something warm in hand because I definitely have some thoughts. 

I pressed pause on my writing before June had even ended. Somewhere in that final week – where June slowly bled into July, where the 4th was looming overhead and I knew, with the fireworks and loud celebrations taking place right outside my door, I’d be getting nothing done – I decided I wouldn’t move forward with my writing in the month ahead. Something in my gut pumped the breaks, shook its head at me, and said, “Nope. No way. You need a break.”

And it’s so interesting to have felt this internal knowing, this internal pause, especially after I’d spent the entirety of June planning and outlining and imagining for not only Project Magic, but also for Project Truth. I’d planned out an entire novella! What do you mean my body was telling me enough? That I needed to stop and take a breath?

I was discussing exactly this feeling of knowing with my cousin (who is also a writer and is about to publish her debut novel this fall!), and she said something that made me realize how much work I’d put in to the first half of Project Magic. I mean, I’d literally been writing non-stop for six months, putting down tens of thousands of words each month, all culminating in a 155K word manuscript. And, yes, I do view Project Magic as one entity, even if, in the end, it becomes two separate novels. And I do believe I need to write the second half of the story before editing the first. But why on earth did I believe I wasn’t allowed to take any sort of break between the two?

I mean, I know the answer. CoughCapitalismCoughCough. 

In that moment, I realized that I needed to stop pushing. Granted, I hadn’t been pushing super hard, but it was enough that it felt as if I’d been pulling a giant boulder by a precarious rope and my back was beginning to hurt and my arms were like noodles and my hands were blistered and bleeding. 

I know that there’s advice out there to simply stick with it. To refuse to break the chain. To continuously show up and do the work and, eventually, everything will come together. And to a certain extent, I do believe that. I believe in not breaking the chain and in learning to build a consistent practice for yourself, because you could so easily fall into the pits of procrastination or fear and wind up not writing when you really, really want to. 

And so, not breaking the chain helps to build that consistency. It helps you to build that confidence within yourself and to show yourself that you are the kind of person who follows through and chooses the thing you love over fear or convenience or whatever else is attempting to hold you back. Because we’re going to all have bad days, right? We’re going to have days where we don’t want to show up, where we don’t want to write, but the next day we’re going to regret not writing. 

But what I was feeling at the end of June was something different. Because I was showing up. I was putting in the work and the effort. But instead of moving through one bad day, one day in which I wasn’t motivated to write, that motivation began to fall further downhill. It was as if the more I showed up, the less I wanted to write the next day and then the next. I was simply going through the motions, falling back on my writing practice because it was there and it was what I was expected to do as a writer, as an author. 

I was expected to write more days than not. 

Don’t get me wrong: I am proud of my story’s direction, even though writing the most recent bits felt like a slog, like a huge, unnecessary, uphill battle. but I could also feel my tank running empty. 

As much I didn’t want to break the chain because of what had happened after I’d published A Daisy and Lilly’s Valley where I completely stopped writing for two whole years, the desire to take a step back was still there. Even though I was afraid that, in doing so, I’d lose all my momentum and not be able to jump back in to the story I’ve spent the majority of 2026 writing. I really believed, at the beginning of this year, that I would write every single weekday from now until the day I die, basically. A lofty goal, to be sure. 

So, pressing pause on my work for now has been really scary, but I think that it’s absolutely necessary. I’m not feeling super drawn to writing right now. There’s just so much other stuff that’s equally important in my life that I want and need to attend to, that I’ve had on pause while I focused on writing. See, that really is the thing, isn’t it. When we say yes to one thing in our life, we are effectively saying no to a whole host of other things. And there is nothing wrong with that, but eventually, balance needs to be restored. You can only tilt in one direction for so long before the other direction – i.e. the things you are tilting away from – begin clamoring for your attention and try to tilt you in another direction. 

You’re looking for balance over the long term, not every single day, which was something I was attempting to achieve by continuing to write every single day on top of doing all the other things that were calling me to pay attention. That is what was leaving me depleted. That is what made my writing practice begin to look more like a chore, something I needed to check off my to-do list, rather than the joyful experience it had once been for me. 

So, instead of trying to do it all every single day (a habit I swing in to often), I’ve been asking myself if I’ve achieved a wobbly balance over the past week, the past month, the past 6 months, the past year? Does it feel as if I attended to all the important parts of my life at some point in a roughly balanced way? 

I really like this particular view on balance (inspired by Brooke McAlary’s work) because it gives permission. It gives you permission. And it gives me permission to let go a little bit and just go with the flow of our lives and not feel this pressure to be writing every single day and to not feel as if you are failing somehow as a writer, as an author, as whatever. Right now is actually the first time in a long time that everything feels balanced for me. And so I’m going to keep following that feeling and continue doing what I can each day to remind myself that I’m just one person and that writing will be here for me when the time is right.

I guess this entire essay is my long way of coming here, to you, to say. . .Let’s give ourselves permission. Permission to take a step back. To pause. To reassess. If the season you’re in right now isn’t right for you and your writing, that’s okay. Give yourself time. Give yourself space. I promise, there’s always going to be more time. There’s always going to be writing. You can always come back to it. It’s not going anywhere. 

There is this stigma out there that, if you’re not writing every single day or your focus is elsewhere, somehow you are not a writer. Not a real writer anyway. But I don’t think that that’s true. I think that anyone is a writer. If you write at any point in your life, you are a writer. And why do you have to do it every single day? We are multifaceted human beings. We each contain multitudes on multitudes on multitudes. We each have different seasons of our lives that require more or less of us. And right now, for me in particular, I have very clearly entered into a season heavily focused on restructuring my business, and that’s taking up a lot of brain space. And that’s ok. It’s ok that my brain is filled with inventory sheets and accounting and reconfiguring how I want my business to support me in the long run. How can it not be? Untitled Thoughts is just as much a part of my life as gardening or baking or sewing or writing ever will be. 

When we grip and we push and we try to rush things out because we feel as if we’re running out of time or that we’re somehow behind everyone else, that doesn’t produce our best work. It doesn’t produce our most honest work.Good work can come from it, sure, but I feel as if it’s more frantic and that energy is witnessed through the work itself. 

I always have this fear of not getting the work out in time before I die. Morbid, I know. But I’ve come to realize recently that this fear I carry, this fear that propelled me to drag myself to the writing chair long after my body had given me every indication it was time to rest, that is very much my own ego talking. Of course I want to get my words out there. I want others to feel delighted and inspired by my stories. I want one person to read my words and have relief wash over them because they felt seen or heard or understood. 

I want my words and my work to make a difference. Always. 

But I keep forgetting that the biggest difference that’s being made is in my practice, is in actually sitting down and writing and crafting the story from a place that is deep within myself rather than trying to push it out for the sake of getting it out there. For the sake of my being seen and heard and appreciated. I need to allow the work to come to me when it is ready, but, more importantly, when I am ready. When both things are true, magic is the inevitable by-product. I simply have to release my grip a little and trust. 

Here’s to giving ourselves permission to listen to the wisdom of our own bodies, to pause when it asks us to step back, and to trust in ourselves and in the timing of the universe that when it’s right, we’ll find our way back to the page.

✨ Keep Shining Bright, Friends ✨