That was a line from Roger von Oech’s A Kick in the Seat of the Pants, a creative-thinking book. His point: You need to take a break from what you’re doing sometimes rather than keep slogging at the same thing (e.g., don’t spend your lunch hour working at your desk).
This was sometimes a problem for me back at The Log: I’d be working away, lunch hour would approach and I’d decide I was soooo close to getting finished, I’d just keep writing and then take a break. It always took longer than I thought and my mind felt fried at the end—and it would probably have gone easier if I took a break in the middle.
With the Applied Science stories to be done for Big Pulp and Enemy Within close to deadline, I’m feeling the same impulse to keep going, screw my lunch breaks, use every minute of the day. It’s still a mistake. I don’t have to do it to finish the work, no matter how much my brain screams otherwise, and I always wind up feeling a little glazed.
No more! Lunch time (12 pm, 1 pm, whenver) will mean something new!
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