Writing a book can be an exhausting process.

When it comes to writing projects that take a lot effort, it's not exactly a secret that making them work isn't usually that easy. In most cases it takes a lot of effort, rewrites and re-evaluations before the quality of the project can be as good as possible. 

After all, the more demanding and the more time consuming your project is, the more difficult it is to make every aspect of the task work. You cannot expect things to work immediately, no matter how good or talented you might be as a writer.

So the reason that I'm writing about this is that I have had some problems in my own book writing project. I think it's pretty clear that it has been an exhausting process to deliver stuff that meets certain quality standards and that is good enough.

In practice, one of the best indicators of this is that I haven't really felt that good about the quality of the book. At no point did I feel completely confident about the overall quality, even though the script had already been proofread and was well received too.

After all, among other things, I felt that the pacing of the story wasn't good enough and that the structure in the book version was lacking. The chapters were too rushed and in some cases clearly didn't have a balanced beginning, middle and end.

Furthermore, even though the story as a whole was well thought out, I felt that there was content in the adaptation (the story is based on my movie script) that perhaps didn't fit in tonally. There were some 'comedic' and 'ironic' scenes that just didn't work.

What made the process so gruelling is that even though I tried my best to rewrite and keep pushing with the project, my rewrites just weren't good enough. I didn't manage to spot all the problems even though the book kept getting somewhat better.

Fortunately, once I managed to take a complete break from the project during the summer (more than two months) this helped to clear my thoughts. This 'lucky' break gave me a chance to think about something else than writing.

Not surprisingly, once I got back to writing, I managed to get things done. I managed to do things like make the book longer (by 25%), give the chapters a better pacing and even kill some of those 'darlings' from the script that didn't work in the book version.

As a whole, all these good things happened because I finally took a long break and managed to give up on some of those stubborn ideas that I was desperately clinging on to. I had finally accepted that certain things in the story needed to be adjusted or changed.

In that sense, when I take a look at this project as a whole, it's pretty clear that writing good stuff is not just about putting in the hard work and putting in the hours. You shouldn't rely too much on your almighty persistence to fix your problems.

After all, even though it's crucial to have a good writing routine and to have a good work ethic, you should remember that simply pushing hard won't always be enough. There are other factors too that affect your success as a writer.

In the end, especially in my case, had I not taken a break from writing three months ago, there's no chance that I would have written something decent. There's no chance that I would have managed to get the book in a shape that is 'good' enough.

After all, even though I did try my best, before the break I was entirely too married to some of my ideas and wasn't able to see the forest for the trees. I wasn't able to understand that the book wasn't finished and that I still needed to make some changes.

In that sense, if your task doesn't seem to go well either, you should try giving yourself a break too. You should try that break, because even though taking it might not be easy, there's a good chance that it works and that it's something that will actually work for you.