When And How to Take a Break from a Creative Project
When your momentum is petering out, bookmark the project and come back to it refreshed
I spent a couple of years trying to start a webcomic. I had an idea I was excited about, and I spent months developing the plot, practicing drawing comic pages, and setting up my website. I redrew the first three pages multiple times. I planned to put one page up on my site every month.
Making one full-color page every month, when you’re new to it and work full time, is a much more grueling schedule than it sounds. I toyed with the idea of making a reserve of pages and holding them back as a buffer so that I could take the pressure off of my release schedule.
Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to take a pause from publishing pages long enough to build up a reserve. I thought I’d lose momentum if I did.
Looking back, I can see that I had no momentum to lose. I was wading through quicksand, struggling every inch of the way, and I hadn’t taken a break in years. I barely even knew what momentum felt like.
I eventually deferred working on the comic indefinitely, as other projects took priority. I can’t know for sure, but I think taking a few breaks before I got so tired may have enabled me to finish it.
