Why switching off switches you back on

I've been travelling through Europe for the past five weeks and put myself on a deliberate cyber diet. No blogging about my latest books, no trawling through Facebook or posting tweets (#CALarmer), I didn't even take my Kindle (shock, horror). For 34 glorious days, I got back to the real world. Family close by, I strolled, marvelling, through the cobbled streets of Paris. I delighted in the buzz of Barcelona and the snow dipped alps of Mt Pilatus in Switzerland. I swam in the Mediterranean and ogled the Mona Lisa, my disappointed children beside me ("But, Mum, it's soooo small!"). I ate fresh Greek squid and drank cherry beer in Brugge, and I had little more than my journal and a few well-thumbed paperbacks for company (Harlan Coben and Kate Moran if you must know).

And it was clearly just what I needed because, one night, around day 28, I had an epiphany.

I was lying in bed listening to the wind howling outside our cosy villa in Santorini when it came to me, in a whoosh—the key to a book I had been struggling with for many years. Dubbed Greek Expectations, this is the story of a woman's journey back to a small Greek island in search of something she left there many years earlier. Problem was, I could not decide what it was she was actually searching for. Well, I had an idea, of course, it was the whole reason I'd started the story a decade ago, but it was clearly a crap idea because I could never get very far with the story before I laid down my proverbial pen and moved on to other projects.

And then, that night in the Greek Isles, it all made sense. Of course! That's what she's looking for. Suddenly, miraculously, I had the whole novel crystal clear in my mind, and it was invigorating. It still is. I can't wait to throw out my old, muddled draft, and start anew.

I struggled to sleep after that—plotting novels is never good for insomniacs—and promptly jotted the plot down in my travel journal over an icy frappe at Perissa Beach the next day. And then a calmness descended. That night I slept like a baby.

I don't know, now, whether this tantalising plot line came to me because I was travelling to fresh and enthralling lands or because I had taken a much needed break from computers and the internet. I assume it was a little of both, but I know for a fact that there's nothing more enriching for the mind and soul. Whether we're creative types or not, but especially if we are, we all need time out from our ordinary, busy, noisy lives. We all need time to enrich the mind, nourish the imagination and be still, even if we're doing it trudging through the Louvre or towards the Acropolis. Or simply sitting in our back yard and doing nothing at all.

Sometimes you just need to stop staring into a screen to see things more clearly.

I can't wait to get started on Greek Expectations (#2). In the meantime, happy reading ... (and thanks, Santorini, I owe you one).

xo Christina