Last week, I finished #2 of the Detective Lou Norton series. Yay! And now, I want to start #3. I know the story, I know the characters, I know 68 percent of what I plan to write. But!
I cannot pick up the pen for more than ten minutes without sighing and mentally pushing away.
You know that I write full-time. And that I have a fourth grader. And that I live in Los Angeles. Each of these activities require mental calisthenics. (Arrays and quotients in fourth grade? Really??) And around 2:35 every afternoon, I start going dim.
I guess my brain is saying, 'Basta!" And according to this Scientific American article, Why Your Brain Needs More Downtime, that's a good thing.
"Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets," essayist Tim Kreider wrote in The New York Times.
And so, I'm resting some. Playing 'Dishonored.' Doing easy thinking as much as I can. Letting my mind stretch and pick up shells on the beach and eat popcorn and all of that. I'll be a better writer, a better mother, a better citizen for it.
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