I often encourage writers to take a break, have some down time, and intersperse long seasons of pouring out with seasons of getting filled up. So I’m taking my own advice this summer. I’m taking a break.

It’s long overdue. After writing/editing nearly 70 published book projects and writing more than 3,000 devotionals, it’s time to dial it back a little—temporarily. So in the spirit of high schoolers everywhere—and in sync with the beginning of my son’s summer break—I’m off the blogs until around Labor Day.

For those of you who subscribe to one of my regular emails, here’s what that means:

Main Blog (the one still without a name): This is the last post until the fall, at which time you’ll get an out-of-the-blue email from me some Monday and think, “Oh yeah, there’s that blog again.”

The Better Words Blog for writers: The Wednesday post and the Friday tip of the week will be off next week, then at the beginning of June, I’ll start posting reruns until the fall. So those of you who haven’t subscribed since the beginning (which is most of you) will hardly notice a difference. You’ll still get the weekly post and tip after next week. If you have been a subscriber from the beginning, the posts and tips may seem vaguely redundant. Sorry, but maybe they will fall in the category of “helpful reminder” instead of “pointless repetition.”

Faith.Hope.CoffeeBreak e-devotional: No difference here. Most are already written, and I’ll continue to publish them through September, at which point the cycle will start all over again. So there will be no interruption in the daily readings.

Thanks for subscribing, and have a great summer!

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I don’t agree with Bertrand Russell on much, but I love this quote from In Praise of Idleness: “When the rest of the world thinks we are idle, the brain, if properly trained, is following its own path.”

I wrote a few weeks ago about the virtues of giving the brain time to wander, and I find it profoundly encouraging that neurological studies back me up. Though our brains have seemingly limitless capacity to process information, they still need time and breathing room to do so. They need to sit. To gaze. To simply rest.

(Yes, our brains are always doing something, even when we’re sleeping. But I’m talking about conscious, focused activity. We have limits.)

According to neurological research:

• The brain’s ability to multitask is vastly overestimated—at least in the true sense of processing multiple spheres of information at one time. We can really only focus on one thing at a time, though we passively receive information from several sources at a time. The more projects you are focused on at once, the less effectively you are dealing with each one. You can only do one thing well at a time.

• We need mental down time in order to process and consolidate information. Creativity and memory both suffer when we don’t have it. Down time doesn’t have to be an episode of SpongeBob. It can be reading a book for pleasure, taking in a sunset, or having a casual conversation. The brain is still engaged (unlike with an episode of SpongeBob), but it’s engaged differently. Calmly. With breathing room.

• Technology is negatively rewiring our brains in ways that harm our attention span, our ability to experience pleasure, our ability to deal with anxiety, and our ability to retain information. It has greatly increased the amount of information we process, but it is redefining how we process—and, more specifically, how we learn—and not always for the better. (The Digital Invasion, Archibald Hart and Sylvia Hart Frejd, Baker 2013)

• Spiritual practices like deep, focused prayer can positively rewire our brains to enhance both physical and emotional health. In fact, research is showing that we are originally wired for spiritual experiences and predisposed for faith (What Your Body Knows About God, Rob Moll, IVP 2014). When we honor that aspect of ourselves, our work, our relationships, and our mental health benefit.

Obviously these facts have huge implications for the writing process, which is what most concerns me, being a writer and all. But they apply to virtually any area of life and to modern lifestyles in general. If you want to be an effective writer—or perhaps simply an effective person—you’ll need to buck the trend, swim upstream, defy the odds, or whatever other image you want to use for behaving differently from the rest of society.

The bottom line is that you need to give your brain time to wander, refresh, and rethink. You need not only to take in information but to take your time processing it. If you’re a writer like me, this is absolutely vital for the creative process. But whatever field you work in, it’s a key to being productive, not burning out, and having some semblance of quality of life. 

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I often get questions from aspiring writers who want to improve and/or get published. I love to help when I can, but it’s hard to give specific advice without spending a lot of time diving into the writer’s work. Still, there are some basics that apply to everyone.

And the questions usually aren’t specific anyway. In fact, they are pretty broad. The most common one goes something like this: “I want to write a book. How do I get started?”

The most helpful advice I can give—and it may be disappointing since it isn’t a magic key that unlocks the publishing door right away—is this:

1. Start. This really is the closest thing to a “key” to getting started. It’s to actually start. Sit down and write something—anything—even if it isn’t good. Most people who ask this question are waiting to have exactly the right thoughts that will pour out in exactly the right way on the page. That won’t happen unless you sit down and start typing. Even if you don’t know where to begin, just begin. Whatever comes out won’t be your finished product, but it will be a lot closer to the finished product than the thoughts in your head. The hardest part about writing (for me) is ramping up into it. Once you get started, you get on a roll. And momentum is half the battle.

2. Read. A lot. One of the best ways to get good writing into you is to read good writing. You won’t want to copy someone else’s style, but you do want to learn from it. You don’t have to analyze it. Just read it. Let it sink in. It becomes part of you and somehow helps whatever is in you to flow out in a more writerly kind of way.

3. Dream big, start small. Very few people publish a book for their first project. They publish magazine articles, blogs, newspaper columns, and lots of other little things. They build up a word bank—published material and not—that becomes the source of larger works. They hone their craft in the process, and they also overcome a significant obstacle in getting a book published, since one question book publishers always ask is, “What else have you published?” “Nothing” is not a helpful answer.

4. Build a platform. This is closely related to point #3. Like it or not, the primary question on the mind of a publisher isn’t, “Is this a good book?” The bigger question is, “Are people going to buy this book?” They want it to be a good book, of course, but they have to keep the company solvent and feed their own kids. They can’t continually publish great literature at a loss. So you have to have a following of some sort. And in the days of social media, you can be building one now. Even if you’re going to self-publish, which is a much more viable option than it used to be, you’re going to need a platform unless you just have lots of money to spend on a book that few people know about. So as you’re writing articles, blogs, etc., cultivate your readership.

None of those satisfy the get-published-quick-and-hit-the-big-time desire that often fuels us as writers, but they are enormously important. And over time, they can open the doors for the book that is in you to get out of you and into the hands of others.

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I used to have very little interest in fiction. I wanted truth, not stories. It took a wave of rediscovery of powerful stories to jolt me out of that illusion. Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and Les Misérables. Braveheart and Gladiator. All have some expression in them of the larger story, the great epic of God and his creation. And oh, by the way, the parables of Jesus are pretty powerful too. Oops. What was I thinking?

So now I have something of a dilemma. As a writer, how should I invest my time in the coming years? Should I continue with straightforward commentary about God and the world and human beings? Or instead of talking about truth, should I invest my time in compelling stories that demonstrate it? Both can change lives, but stories have a way of changing them more radically and memorably. 

Regardless of the direction my writing takes, I'll forever be enamored with the ability of a story to capture my heart and express things that words can hardly describe. And, unlike I used to do years ago, I won't have any reservations about watching a good movie or reading a good book. Truth is everywhere, if we know how to see it. And I love how it shows up in a story.

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