Last week when writing, I hit a fairly significant stopping point in the book… In all honesty, I probably could have reworked it and made it the ending to the book, completed a novel length novel and set the stage for probably two more novels to come after that.  I’m at 350 pages, roughly.  It would have been a respectable sci-if novel.  The problem is, I’m not done writing yet.  There’s no reason for me to end the story here.  I don’t know if there’s two more novels to this story.  There may or may not be.  Maybe I’m at the middle of a long novel.  Maybe it’s two-thirds.  I don’t know.  I am along for the ride on this and am letting the story take me there.  

To me, I don’t know if it is fair to the work to stop here.  

I did take a break though.  I took some time, just because life gets in the way.  Work, other work, kids.  You know.  Sex, drugs and rock & roll.  The writer’s lifestyle.  So a week later I came back to the book.  Literally writing the scene depicted below.  

Taking time away is one of the worst things you can do for your work.  It is such a disservice to it.  At the same time, I needed time to think on “Am I done with this chapter of this story?”  Or is this going to be a much bigger novel?   I needed that time to decide.  Anyway, going back to your book after taking even a couple days off is hard.  It’s brutal to get back into the routine.  Writing is exercise.  When you take a break from the gym, you TAKE A BREAK for a long time.  If you miss two weeks of a workout regimen, it doens’t come back that easy.  Two weeks turns into two months and suddenly, summer is here and your summer body that you had in march is now ready for winter.  Writing is the same way.  It’s WAY too easy to let that day off turn into two, three, a eek, two weeks, seven weeks… and suddenly you have no idea who your characters are and what they fuck they were doing in the first place.  

I think that’s why I’m always writing in cliffhangers.