This was also why authors sometimes seemed to go back on their word... because, fundamentally, an author couldn't accurately judge how long it would take to write a passage to their satisfaction, to get it right. Before committing to writing it, they could only give a rough estimate.
Give too short an estimate, and sometimes you ran over, and readers would say, "Why say it if you can't do it?"
But give too long an estimate, and you actually couldn't force yourself into the right state, because it was precisely the awareness that "readers are waiting anxiously" that forced you to push yourself close to your limits. That was why, during climaxes, you could often write eight or nine thousand characters a day, sit there all day, pull an all-nighter, though you were bound to be listless the next day.
So when I took time off, I generally gave myself a deadline that looked a little tight. Though that inevitably meant running over in the end, this was actually the reasoning behind it.
Four days ran over into ten... but after all, that was still only ten days.
If I asked for ten days from the start, though, I might very well still not be finished after fifteen.
Because there was no upper limit to "getting the planning right before starting to write."
More paradoxically, this couldn't become a situation where "I ask for four days, but the readers all know I'll actually need ten to finish, so they don't pressure me, and everyone's happy."
Because that would amount to asking for ten days outright.
So the interesting thing was that there had to be this irritable game of mutual distrust.
Besides, asking for a long break all at once also brought a guilty sense of wasting time, a lingering