Holidays: To Write or Not To Write?

So writers are supposed to be writing all the time, right? Like, constantly. On any given day a writer should in theory be glued to the PC, their fingers and wrists cramping up, with a metal wastebasket full of wadded up notes (ok maybe that's from the 50s when there were typewriters).

Fact or fiction? Or maybe a combination of both?

We have a holiday weekend this weekend, it's Memorial Day. And as a freelance writer I can sort of arbitrarily decide if I want to take Monday off (I do), and that means I won't be writing because that's what I do for a living. So a holiday means no writing...right?

Well, I certainly won't be writing for my clients. But for my personal projects, maybe or maybe not. Sometimes I feel like writing every day and so I do. But most times I need to let things lay fallow for a while to give my brain more time to gel my thoughts into something that makes sense.

So when the holidays come around, do I plan to write? No. Will I? Maybe.

I think there are some writers who need to write every day to keep their momentum going. And there are plenty of published authors out there who say you must write daily...or else (insert menacing consequence here).

But I still don't subscribe to that notion. I subscribe to not only writing but also living, and this means enjoying time out in the real world and away from my computer. This means planning to use my holiday as an actual holiday, and writing if I just plain feel like it.

So come Monday, you know what I'll be doing? Sitting on my couch reading a book. And then maybe I'll get an itch and pull out my PC and write a while, or maybe I won't. But I'll be taking the day to do whatever it is I feel like doing. No planning, and no expectations.