If you stopped writing for a long time

[pegkerr]

If you stopped writing for a long time--and I mean a LONG time, on the order of several years--and then managed to start again successfully, I would like to hear a little about your experience. Why did you stop? What did you need to resume? What prompted your resuming? Did you fret about not-writing when you were not writing? Were you afraid that you had given it up for good? When you resumed, how long did it take you to have faith in yourself?

Comments

[redbird]

Did Zorinth suffer from that, compared with your girls? Probably. He didn't do any martial arts until last year when he was old enough to organise it and go by himself. There were times when his dinner would be late because I was writing, when I wasn't paying attention to him because I was writing, he couldn't assume a hundred percent of my attention whenever he wanted it, when we couldn't afford things because I didn't take a job that wouldn't have given me time to write, and he grew up knowing I wasn't going to utterly immolate myself on the pyre of what was better for him.

I don't think that counts as suffering: Zorinth's dinner was late sometimes, but he didn't go hungry, and frankly I don't think it's good for children to grow up knowing their mothers will immolate themselves on that pyre. Okay, so he didn't take martial arts until this year, but he's not going, five or ten years from now, to assume that any woman he's involved with will do all the boring work and put her needs ahead of his. (I suspect that what girls learn from having that sort of self-sacrificing mother is different, but possibly just as destructive. And Peg is not that sort of mother either: I know that from reading what she's written about looking for a balance.)