Choosing NOT To Write

By Kel Butler

As most people know I have been plodding away on a couple of novels that I am very excited about. Going into the summer holidays I was hoping to dedicate time to plotting them out and get them ready to write in 2020. Then the bushfires happened. And I started another podcast to try and help in the fight against Climate Change - a dual podcast and political protest called Catastrophic. And my world of making things got very busy. 

In the midst of all this my podcasting business started to really grow. As I prove myself and demonstrate what my storytelling business is about, people are starting to trust us with their work more and more, which is not only fantastic but humbling. Projects I have been working on for the past year are finally coming together and I am excited for what Listen Up Podcasting will be producing this year and the talented people we get to work with. 

Then there is all the other stuff that goes along with life and kids. It's become a LOT. And this past January I had to get real about what I was actually capable of doing..and completing. I was in danger of being that person constantly working on things but never finishing any of them because I was spread way too thin, to properly move anything forward to completion. 

A choice needed to be made. A hard choice but a realistic one. The podcasting OR the books. Of course it had to be the podcasting because that is the passion that earns my income right now. The one that pays my bills. So I have made the choice to put a pin in my novels, knowing full well that I will pick them up again and finish them later. I have no doubt about that part. These stories are deep in me, they are good and they need to come out. Just not now. 

I need a couple of years to get this business to the point where I can make space for that kind of writing and daydreaming and I am interested to see what a couple of years of living and reading and growing will add to them. Just because I choose to pause writing my books though doesn't mean I choose to stop writing. Quite the contrary. 

Every podcast I make is a form of writing, every blogpost, every facebook or twitter post, every journal entry, every secret poem, every communication with a friend or colleague. Everything is writing and storytelling to some degree. I now view every word I put anywhere as precious and another word towards the honing of my craft. It's the words that matter, both the absorbing of them through reading and the purging of them through any form of writing. 

Writing and storytelling reveals itself in so many ways. It is not what we write or how we write or what form that writing comes in that matters, it is that we write at all. So this next couple of years I may not be writing my books but I will be writing. Copious amounts. In all sorts of ways. And that can only make me a better storyteller in the long run. 

Have you ever made the conscious decision to Not write? We’d love to hear all about it in the comments.