Many moons ago, when I still lived in the Boston area, my friend Freda* and I were having a hard time writing one of our books, and she said our brains needed fallow time. We talked about it — and went with that.
Just as fields are left unplanted so they can replenish, she thought our writing brains needed to be replenished — by taking a break from writing!
We stopped work on our book — and each of us went on to do the other things we were doing, and let our writing brains sit fallow for a while.
Some of our colleagues called it wasting time — but for me — then, like now, it is not wasted time – it is a vastly different type of productive time – and it is nearly invisible.
Back then, our fallow time was followed by rapid writing time, a finished manuscript, and publication! That period of NOT writing did what it was supposed to do, like the fallow field, we were again filled with ideas and the words to write!
I sometimes remember this fallow time idea, but I mostly forget the concept – until I was working on my current book about getting stuck, and it came back to me like the proverbial ton of bricks.
Fallow time was what my brain needed this August and September!
I have an easier time with how I feel when I can label it — and labeling my brain status as fallow time made it easier for me to connect with what was/is going on.
I’m almost out of my fallow time, but I am not pushing it — I sit and remember all those other fallow times when the words came back — rushing out and into coherent content — and I know they will again do that — and that’s why knowing I am in fallow time is so great!
I know it has an endpoint and abundance will reappear!
The brain energy is coming back!
And the ideas are flowing!
PS [sigh] now there is no publisher to clean up the manuscripts, edit, and advertise….that’s on me now….
*Freda Rebelsky, Ph.D. was my professor in Graduate School — and my best friend, co-author, and colleague. She died in 2009 and I still miss talking to her about Psychology. If you ever had a child development or lifespan textbook by Rebelsky and Dorman or Dorman and Rebelsky — I’m that Dorman.
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