Why spending time with friends helps your writing

Hope’s Hacks
(some ways to break up that writer’s block)
This month’s cure: Family and friends   
What the cure is: Detoxing from a burn-out of writing all the time    

Why the cure will help: I know, it sounds frightening. Taking a step away from the desk. But as someone who gets 5-8 bylines a week, and with book projects on top, I understand how quickly burnout can take over.

Give yourself time to spend with your spouse, kids, and friends. Don’t worry, you’ll have time for those projects, I promise.

Plus, when you let yourself spend time with others, you give your brain some well-needed breathing room. And it gives you a good excuse to check out that art museum downtown or go on a walk in a national park when you have someone to do it with.

Who knows? Maybe your conversation with friends will help you work through a sticky plot point, give you a piece of dialogue to work with, or inspire a devotional entry. Don’t go into the meeting expecting it to happen, but more often than not, something great come out of giving time to others.

Hope Bolinger is a literary agent at C.Y.L.E. and graduate of Taylor University’s professional writing program. More than 350 of her works have been featured in various publications ranging from Writer’s Digest to Keys for Kids. She has worked for various publishing companies, magazines, newspapers, and literary agencies and has edited the work of authors such as Jerry B. Jenkins and Michelle Medlock Adams. Her column “Hope’s Hacks,” tips and tricks to avoid writer’s block, reaches 5,000+ readers weekly and is featured monthly on Cyle Young’s blog, which receives 63,000+ monthly hits. She is excited that her modern-day Daniel “Blaze” just released with IlluminateYA (an imprint of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas), and they contracted the sequel for July 2020. She enjoys all things theater, cats, and fire. You can find more about her at www.hopebolinger.com