"Huge fan of Bukowski from way back. When I went on my first hiatus from writing, I read him extensively, after discovering his work via John Fante (backwards way in, I guess). The second hiatus I took was to act for 8 years. I think some family members and close friends were surprised (and disappointed), but it did the trick: when I finally came back to it, not only did I have a wealth of experiences to draw from, I “got” more about writing since I now understood character motivation from a deeper level. The one item I’d add to your list of prescriptives for people struggling now is to *limit* your time writing. Set aside one hour or two or whatever, no matter how much time you actually have, and only allow yourself to write then. Merlin Mann brought this up in a recent talk at Jesse Thorn’s Maximum Fun camp (or whatever they called it). In the same way that scarcity can create urgency in the marketing/sales cycle, it can do it for creative output." - colleen wainwright