Hiatus: noun. a pause or gap in series, sequence, or process
A break can last fifteen minutes, four days or two weeks. It can be a change in the weather or the jump to a new page. It could be an escape or a fortuitous opportunity. Breaks are required by law, taken by choice, made by accident, or stumbled upon.
There have been a variety of breaks in the last six months of my life. I spent my winter break right back at school as a literary agent intern where I got my “big†break into the publishing industry. My brother and I broke our dad’s Donald Duck mug, and even though he almost never uses it, we hunted down a new one on eBay because it broke our sentimental hearts. I took an unanticipated break from school and spent the whole time wearing broken-in sweats and feeling like I was breaking all the rules. My broken computer hobbled along to the end of the semester, holding out just long enough for Apple to break out the Macbook, on which I am writing today.
I took a break from blogging. I missed it. I missed the words and the thesaurus and the neat lines of text and two-pixel borders around images. I missed counting up hits and rolling my eyes at the most peculiar referrals.
It was more of a pause, I’d say, in my capacity to write in any way that could satisfy my standards. I’ve had writer’s block that was less of a boulder or a wall and more of a yawning gap in the road, which could not be crossed for lack of poetic words or thoughts that followed uninterrupted paths of logic. I’d compose one sentence, but before I could finish the second, I’d be dwelling on the first again, tweaking and editing the bliss out of language by sterilizing the process. I felt detached from everything I wrote and that was the most lost that I’ve ever felt. My own thoughts blared inside my head with an indecipherable cacophony, creating a resonating throb, but no poetry or prose.
At New Year’s, in the fourth grade, I bought a composition notebook and resolved to start a journal in which I wrote down one positive thing about every day. I lasted about six weeks, a stretch either much longer or much shorter than any of my other New Year’s Resolutions have lasted in the years since. A few times, I missed a day and made it back to the notebook, but once a week had passed, it seemed too late, past the point.
I’m not going to let there be a point beyond which it is too late to return to the blog. I’ll give myself a break, a hiatus here and there, but it’s worth coming back and clicking Compose New Entry when inspiration strikes.
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