Hiatus. An opening or a gap, or better yet – a gape.  There are two kinds of breaks from writing, one within, and one without. Why only two? Because I can think only in twos, one good and one bad, because I think only in dualities.  Without, one stops writing altogether. Within, one suspends writing One thing to take up another. I would count reading a novel in this second category. The enjoyment of reading another author is a gratifying form of plagiarism.

Within writing, the hiatus can be either good or bad. It is good if the compulsion is driven by all the wrong reasons, that is to say, done out of sheer boredom, laziness, or hating what one had been working on.

It is bad if done for all the right reasons, that is to say, by the need to set goals and hit deadlines, setting aside a Ulysses, as it were, in order to finish a book report. I don’t mean that one is grander than the other. Rather, it is where one’s inspiration lies. Ulysses is inspired writing. The other is sometimes necessary to put food on the table.

It is why deadlines are essential to writing and also a nuisance and often a hindrance. But essential, nonetheless.

My latest gap (a week or so) came at the expense of my blog for the benefit of my novel. The good kind of hiatus. But, a self-imposed deadline made me feel the need to post SOMETHING. Bad hiatus. So keep it simple and to the point, and get back to the good stuff. Simple, something that seems to escape me, chasing those lines that I have yet to find.

The deadline achieved, I can safely turn back to inspiration till the next book report is due.