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However, pushing too much to produce marketable stories can take its toll. Like working out too much and exhausting your body, the creative muscles in the writer need time to contract and replenish as well.

I go through this regularly. Especially being published in e-books, the release rate at publishers is fiercely competitive. E-publishers don't generally pay advances which can give you a small cushion until your book is released, and new releases also generally stay on the opening page of the site for one week before being moved back to make room for the next batch. I constantly feel the pressure to get a move on my current works-in-progress, to feverishly write until a final draft is produced. I have even contracted pieces with publishers before the book is finished, ensuring my place on the release lineup, but also creating only more pressure for myself to finish.

Is this always bad? No. I don't mean to say that. There are times when that pressure has been what I needed to give me a burst of energy. However, there are times when I know I just need to let myself be and not hound myself and my muse for the writing juice. When this is the case, if I push more, the creativity recedes more. Right now, I've sustained a terrible loss in my family. We are grieving and there's nothing else to do but to let this process happen. Which means for me, that there are short bursts where I can write a bit in a day, and then there can be a week when I can barely write 300 words. I know from experience that when the energy is needed to finish the project, it will be there. I know this because the few times I have gone back to my current WIP (the one I talked about yesterday with the guy escaping his sadistic yakuza lover), I have found the time away from it to have given me fresh and deeper perspectives on my characters - which I would not necessarily have had if I ground the book out just to get it done.

Baiting my writer's soul in this way is also important for me to honor my readers. As I mentioned in my post about writing from the heart, I can't repeat enough that readers will know when a writer has rushed something - it will come through in the quality of the work. When I have found this in a book I'm reading, it's always insulting and disappointing. I have never read a second book from a writer when I've come across this. Sounds unforgiving, I know, but, readers spend their hard-earned money on our books. They deserve quality. Just as I owe myself the quality of writing the best story I can.