Sometimes, I think, we writers get spoiled by those times when the words seem to flow like water from a tap—just turn it on when you’re ready to write, and turn it off when you’re done for the day. We get spoiled by those extended periods when we have ample time, when our friends and loved ones seem uncommonly understanding, when life’s little stressors seem to have decided to give us a break for a while, when everything, in other words, seems to align just right so that we can write and write often and write well.

We appreciate those times for what they are, but still, we begin to grow used to them after a while. We become accustomed to sitting in front of the computer and turning on the words. We begin to think that maybe we’ve done our time, fought our battle and won it, and now the world will forever step aside and just let us be writers, at last.

But inevitably, the good times will dry up, and on will come the not so good. Something stressful will happen at work or at home or in our families, or worse, for no apparent reason, the tap will just stop flowing. Did we forget to pay the word bill this month? We turn it on, and it just sputters, then dies.

We have any number of ways of referring to these other times: writer’s block, being too busy, being uninspired. Whatever we call it and whatever brings it on, one thing remains fairly consistent each time: after a while, we begin to wonder if we’ve lost whatever it was we once had. We begin to wonder if we aren’t, after all, the writers we once believed ourselves to be.

But it’s that doubt, more than anything, that causes the real problem, I think. I don’t know that there’s anything wrong or evenly remotely unusual about your ability/time/energy/etc. to write sort of ebbing and flowing, sometimes unpredictably. I’ve heard so many successful writers say that sometimes they just need a break from writing, or sometimes they’re just too busy, and that’s okay. Life has to be lived. That’s where we get our material from to begin with.

But when we begin to obsess over whether or not we’ve lost “it,” that’s when the real damage can be done. If I’m questioning my own abilities as a writer, I begin to feel even more distracted, even more blocked, even less inspired. If a day goes by and I don’t write, I begin to think that I’m a failure, that I can’t reasonably call myself a writer. The next day, when I sit down to catch up, I feel frozen. Who do I think I’m fooling? I wonder. I can’t do this. I’m not a writer. And, like the self-fulfilling prophecy those words are, I suddenly can’t do it—I’m too busy thinking about the act of writing itself to actually write anything.

I’m beginning to think that the best thing a writer can do when he or she is going through a dry spell is to just relax and not get too caught up in what it all means or how to break free of it. Sometimes the attempt to shake the block just makes the block worse, oh so much worse. When I write well, when my writing is actually coming together in a satisfactory way, it’s always during a time when I feel confident about my own abilities. When I question my own abilities, my writing gets lousier and lousier, which perpetuates the questioning, and so on.

I’ve been caught in the chaos of a move the past few weeks and have hardly written at all in that time. But for once, when I felt myself begin to get sucked into that downward spiral, I pulled myself back again and reminded myself that I had perfectly good reasons to not be writing—I was busy and distracted (and six months pregnant, which meant I was also tired and swollen and distracted by baby plans, too)—and I refused to let myself even think that my lack of writing said anything about my abilities or future as a writer. So now that we’ve finally finished unpacking and putting away most of our stuff, I’ve been able once again to ease back into writing with little trouble. If I’d gotten too down on myself about not writing, I probably wouldn’t have bounced back so quickly.

I get so spoiled sometimes by the good times, I fail to see the bad times for what they are: a pause, a break, a necessary breather. Sometimes things just happen. Sometimes other things are just more important. But we need to try to remember that there is a difference between the would-be writer who has a million story ideas but never seems to get around to writing (or revising) at all and the genuine writer, who writes when he or she can, and doesn’t when he or she can’t. Just doesn’t. And that’s okay.