I have a bad habit of letting the gas in our cars run low. Most times it reaches that point when the light has been on for about two days and it’s time to pull over and fill up. One time I found myself having to pour gas in the car from a small portable container meant to be used in the lawn mower. Call it procrastination; call it laziness, in the end it’s all the same.

Ernest Hemingway once said: “I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that feed it.” 

I love this quote and do my best to follow it in my own writing life. There are some days when I struggle to find five hundred words to put on the page, and on other days I could write three thousand. That’s the thing that most people don’t understand about writing. Stories don’t always come alive with simple ease.

Writing a novel is a long, grueling process, and is often times very exhausting. I have found that learning to take it at a simple pace is the best way. That means ending the day when it’s time to end; when there is still something left to give. You may know what comes next; you may be dying to get that next scene written. That’s great… But from my experience, sometimes sleeping on it allows you to wake with a fresher outlook on what may come next…

So think about that the next time you hit that wall- Leave a little in the tank, and never let it run dry…