I’ve been away from my Work in Progress for almost two months. I had only planned to give myself a month’s break, but it wasn’t until the end of that period that I decided I really needed feedback from my beta readers. So now I’m on hold, waiting for them to finish reading it and give me critiques.

I’m one of those people who hates to sit still, both literally and metaphorically, so this period of not moving forward with my novel is torture. I have a hard time telling myself that it’s okay not to be outwardly productive, that part of writing is not-doing: thinking, percolating, letting the story simmer in my unconscious. I know this is true, but whenever I think it, the cynical overachiever in me just rolls her eyes and says, “Yeah, right. You’re just justifying being lazy.”

But while I’ve been twiddling my thumbs and cursing my non productivity, something interesting has happened. Without setting fingers to keyboard, I’ve found myself solving problems in my novel, deepening character connections, and devising new plot twists. With each passing week, I feel that I have a clearer sense of direction and a stronger idea of what my book is really about. If I had jumped into a revision after a month away, I would have gone off half cocked. But now, once I receive and integrate the feedback from my beta readers, I’ll be truly ready to dive in to a rewrite. And I know I’ll be glad I had an extra month to let my novel simmer.