Writing About Burn Out

Time for a plug! I belong to a forum called Absolute Write, located at: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums. Aside from being incredibly insightful in all aspects of writing, publishing and the like, the people are genuine, friendly, and always willing to help. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone interested in becoming a part of a writing community.

Next… this week I hereby dub myself the Empress of Procrastination. I’ve done everything in my power to not write this week. My writing has suffered while every other one of my hobbies (including spending way too much time on the internet) has flourished. Since my last post I have barely written 1,000 words and I lacked (and still lack) the ambition to write anything further. Yikes!

Yes, yes. I know what you are thinking: “Randi, you were so excited to get back to writing last week! What in the world happened?”

I’m confident that the answer is burn-out. Over the weekend I pumped out three complete chapters of my WIP, a couple of short stories and an article. On Saturday and Sunday most of my waking hours were dedicated to writing, leaving little time to do anything else.

I know, I know, Stephen King writes in twenty-hour sessions. Arthur Miller locked himself away for weeks until Death of a Salesman was complete. Perhaps I do not have the same drive. Perhaps I do not have the same motivation. Perhaps I’m simply not as dedicated to my craft as they. Whatever the reason, by Sunday night I was “all written out.”

Monday I had a level grinding session in Tales of the Abyss. Tuesday thru Thursday I re-watched a good chunk of the third season of Lost. Tonight, my ever so exciting plans include taking a bubble-bath and washing/flat-ironing my hair.

So what am I going to do about this? In previous posts I’ve mentioned some of my cures for when I cannot write: taking a walk, writing in a new location, trying something new, tasting new things, focusing on my breathing. I could pick one of these options to alleviate my burn-out, I could.

However, I fear that I try my other cures so much that I might someday wear them out. With this in mind, I decided to try a new cure. Instead of trying one or two at a time, I will try them all at once. 

Tomorrow morning my little blue journal and I are going to try something new: we are boarding the 8:04a train to New York City. We will walk to SoHo where we will write in a new location. We will go to a new restaurant and try a new food. And the entire time we will make sure to focus on our breathing.

Well, I will, at least.

It might seem like a huge endeavor just to kick-start my desire to write again, but I believe it will be worth it. As well, I believe it will not only cure me for the short term, but help me out in the long term, too. Will this ultimate of cures work? I’m confident it will- and believing something will work is half of what actually makes it work.

It may seem crazy to go to this much effort simply to write. But Stephen King writes in twenty hour sessions and Arthur Miller locked himself away for weeks until Death of a Salesman was complete, so why can’t doing something radical work for me. And maybe, just maybe, this proves I am equally as dedicated to my craft.

So what is the moral of this post? If you are having difficulty motivating yourself, if you have lost your drive or you are procrastinating more than you like and your typical cures are not working for you, my solution to this predicament is this: if one cure is not cutting it, why not try them all?

I’ll report back next week with my findings. With luck, I will have some excellent news to share!

"Snow Globes"

This is in response to the February 2012 blog chain challenge on www.absolutewrite.com/forums. It isn’t the best piece of work as I typed it up all of 20 minutes ago, but I hope you all enjoy it nonetheless!

Snow Globes

I’m a fan of second chances. I collect them, in fact. Every time I’m given a new one I buy a snow globe to symbolize the event. They all reside in the refurbished Curio cabinet in the far corner of my den. You know, the one I’m too lazy to dust.

I bought another one today to commemorate the moment Alyx let me back into his life. He’s the last in a long chain of men I’ve begged to give me the opportunity to buy another snow globe. Sometimes they’re willing, sometimes they’re not, and sometimes it takes that additional push to their emotional side.

As for Alyx, he’s a pusher. It took six phone calls, eight texts, two dinners and four glasses of wine to earn that damned snow globe. After all that effort, I’d say Alyx is a keeper.

At least for a little while.

When they start leaving toothbrushes and hair gel in the bathroom, that’s when I get antsy. Alyx “forgot his deodorant” today, so he says. But you and I both know what’s really going on. He’s getting comfortable. And that’s when it’s time to forget how much I worked to earn that snow globe.

We’re having dinner. Broiled sirloin tips and garlic mashed potatoes. I made this meal in particular because I know that he knows that I know he isn’t a fan of it. He picks at his plate as if transformed into a six-year-old being asked to eat his cauliflower. The typically relaxed lines of his face are extra firm today, extra stressed, on edge.

I’m about to sabotage my second chance and he knows it.

“I talked with Tom today,” I say.

He stops chewing. “As in Tom, your ex-boyfriend Tom?”

“Yeah,” I respond. “He wants to take me out for coffee.”

Alyx won’t look me in the eye. “Don’t you think that’s a little inappropriate?”

“What?” I ask casually. From where I’m sitting, I can see into the den where the Curio cabinet rests, the one I’m too lazy to dust. “It’s not like we’re married or anything.”

And here we go. The fight begins. I try not to look at his face too closely. If I do I might start up with the I’m sorrys and I’ve never asked for a third chance. Two snow globes for one man is simply too much. I’d have to buy a new cabinet and I don’t exactly have the money for that right now.

It’s been a good twenty minutes and now Alyx is wiping his mouth with his napkin and excusing himself from the table. I start in with the “Please don’t gos”  but he knows that I know that he knows I don’t really mean it. I take my time cleaning up the dinner table, wondering why it was I wanted the second chance in the first place.

Oh, that’s right. I wanted another snow globe.


Participants and posts. Check them out!
Turndog-Millionaire - http://turndog-millionaire.com/ (link to this month's post)
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sambgood

You’re Angry, You’re Frustrated, And You’re Taking It Out On Your Work in Progress (Part 2)

“Getting Closer to Fine”

What do you do when anger and frustration encroach upon your ability to write? This week’s entry examines potential remedies for climbing out of that rut known as negativity.

Now, as I posted last week, I’m angry. About what? Well, everything really. This normally wouldn’t be a problem for me- I’d wait it out- do some writing to calm myself down- but that stopped working.

When the one thing that always makes you happy feels like one more burdensome chore, there’s a problem. How does one get back on track? What kind anti-negativity weapons are in our arsenal? Here are a few things that have helped me out in the past:

Exercising                                      

Try new food (I tried peanut chicken- it was delicious)

Increase social time with friends       

Warm milk and cookies- or comfort food of your choice

Read a new book

Play video games (killing CGI zombies is a good way to relieve frustrations)

Hike/walk in a new area, and, last but not least,

Take a break from writing

I also reached out and asked others to comment on what works best for them. A fellow writer, Anjasa, was one who commented, and left some great advice that certainly helped me out this week:

“Honestly, the only thing I can really do then is put all my energy towards getting myself out of it. I watch funny movies, I listen to upbeat music, I play video games. I can't read when depressed because it's too lonely and too passive of an activity for me, so I try to stay really busy.

If the weather is decent, exercise is a really good way to blow off some steam and it helps with depression, stress, anger and negativity in general.

Other than that, it's a matter of letting things go. Do you find when you're angry and can't write that makes you angrier? Yea, it's a matter of letting that go. Of forgiving yourself and moving on. We're not going to be perfect, we're not going to meet all our deadlines, and we're all doing the best we can with what we have.”

Another writer, The Poet Herself, also chimed in with some great advice:

“Best advice I can offer is to save drafts in separate files. When I'm in a mood like that, I end up killing off big portions of what I've written...and regretting it later. Not a great move. I've started forcing myself to save each session of editing as a separate file so I can resurrect the victims of a bad day, if necessary.”

Here is a list of remedies I tried and my findings:

Cookies and milk did nothing but make me feel fat- I am a girl, after all. I felt down that this remedy did not work this time because it has helped me loads in the past. I guess this new rut was just that big.

I followed a new path along the Meta-comet trail. This did clear my mind a bit; however, by the time I got home I was too tired to write! I think I’ll try an abridged hike next time.

Counting the hike as my exercise, I came to the same conclusion as listed above: a little too much can be a bad thing, especially when all of your writing energy has been zapped by the time you get home. Again, I’ll limit my work out on days when I know I want to get a good amount of writing done.

I give credit to Poet’s advice. I did copy all of my work to a USB device and put it away in case I got the itch to delete my entire WIP (which is above 65,000 words at the moment. This was a good thing because I almost dragged a few MS Word documents into that nasty little trash icon in the bottom right hand corner of my mac’s screen. (Did you know that when a person examines a piece of art they almost always look at the bottom right hand corner of the canvas first? That’s a bad, bad place for such a destructive little widget.)

 

Next, I tried Anjasa’s remedy and listened to some new/fun/calming music. I started listening to the Piano Solo station on Pandora; at first it didn’t do much for me, but as I continued to listen and allowed the clarity of the music to calm my nerves, I found myself more focused and less wound up and scattered. I’d recommend the Piano Solo station to anyone as it also helped with feeling less stressed at work and at home.

What worked the best, actually, was Anjasa’s advice about just letting go. Although, I had to be a bit more extreme than only letting go of my feelings and gripes. Instead, I let go of writing completely.

For the hardcore Author, taking a day or two off from work might seem like an insane waste of time. We have novels, Screenplays and poetry to finish, right? Well, sometimes it’s simply worth the sacrifice. From Wednesday-Thursday of this week, I took two days off and didn’t even glance at a blank word template. I shut writing out completely.

And you know what? That was the remedy that worked best! When I woke up Friday morning, I wanted nothing more than to write. I completed five thousand words yesterday, a good number when compared to the zero words I completed during the first five days of the week. After taking a holiday from writing, it was a passion again- not just another stressor.

Am I still feeling negative about some things? Of course I am. I never thought any of these remedies would be a fix-all in five days or less. Work and school are still stressing me out, but the good thing is that writing again has lifted a lot of the burden off of my shoulders; I can now stand tall and know I’ll make it through this rut that I’m in.

Sometimes, friends, you just have to let go. There will be times your writing will suffer and there’s no getting around that. Remember: being angry because you’re angry only begets more anger. So if writing is starting to feel like a chore versus feeling like a blessing, try taking a day off to recharge your creative batteries. As for me, letting go has helped so much that I am eager to complete this entry and get back to my WIP!

I hope my own journey will help you should you ever fall into the same place. Know that getting over these feelings isn’t an overnight process, but there are combative measures you can take to help put you back on track and make you fall in love with writing all over again.

You’re Angry, You’re Frustrated, And You’re Taking It Out On Your Work in Progress (Part 1)

Did I say you? Because I meant we. If external and/or internal stressors are affecting your ability to write, you’ve come to the right place. Well, if you want someone to relate to, that is.

To start like to tell you a little something about what’s going on with me this week (Debbie Downer alert): I’m angry at work; I’m angry at home; I’m angry at school; I’m angry at the guy who sits in the cubicle next to mine and talks about himself all day.

In summary, I’m just plain angry.

Because I feel so angry and stressed I find that when I do have time to write I stare blankly at my computer monitor until it’s time to do the next thing. So, what do I do to keep this negative streak from further affecting my writing? Do I stop completely for now? Do I continue on knowing that what I write will be a very, very rough draft that I will need to re-examine later?

Do I overdose on ice-cream and fountain cola?

Honestly, I’m not equipped to handle the answer on this one right now, so I’m going to try everything. This week will be an exercise in “how to get out of the negativity rut,” and I will expand upon it next Friday with what worked and what did not.

As for now, I have several potential remedies I plan to engage in over the next six days. Hopefully, experimenting with one (or a few) of these will replenish my creativity and motivation.

Remember: this blog is meant to help others through examining the emotional factors that add into writing, so I would love to know: Do you have any ways to overcome anger and stress? How well do they work for you? What advice can you add to this little experiment? Helpful tips will be added to next week's entry!

As I’ve said, this week is all about exposing the problem: next week is when we digest what we’ve learned and put it into practice. Here’s to hoping that I overcome this perpetually bad mood so that I can offer you advice on how to do the same!

Getting a Grip on Your GAILs. How to Deal With Gremlins, Assumptions, Interpretations and Limiting Beliefs.

The dreaded GAILs. We all have them. I know I do. They interrupt our Me time and cause our hair to stand on end. They take perfectly good bursts of creativity, crinkle them up and toss them in the trash bin (and they don’t even bother with recycling!)They steal our good moods and our motivation and they have the unnerving tendency to ruin perfectly good writing streaks.

But what exactly are these nasty little things called GAILs? Why do they plague us so? How do we combat and learn from them? In order to understand them better, let us, letter by letter, examine what GAILs actually are:

Gremlins

A Gremlin is just that: a vengeful, tyrannous little monster you never should have fed after midnight. Gremlins can be internal: your gremlin(s) might be your insecurities or they may come in the form of any hang-ups you have about publishing your work.  Gremlins can also be external forces: work, chores, that annoying drip in the sink that won’t allow you to concentrate, friends and family who just do not understand the term “writing time,” etc.

Understanding what your Gremlins are is the best way to combat them. Try going somewhere where you can’t hear the drip. If friends and family are consistently pestering you, turn your phone off for an hour or two. If that little voice in your head is telling you that you aren’t good enough, you just tell it to shut up because you are a good enough writer and deep down I know you know it.

Assumptions

We all know what happens when we assume, so I’ll skip the pun. Assuming things to be true or false, positive or negative, right or wrong, doesn’t do anyone any good. When you assume, you make an invalid statement or belief valid, and/ or vice versa. Let’s say you e-mail a chapter of your manuscript to a friend to read over and the friend does not immediately respond. You may assume he or she doesn’t like the work and that is why he or she is not responding.

The truth may be that this friend hasn’t had a chance to check his or her e-mail yet, but that doesn’t matter; you’ve already cemented in your mind the idea that they do not like your work and that is why they are not responding and your mood will only go downhill from there. Is this assumption necessary? Does it help anyone? No. All it does is provide a forum for negativity to breed and create more gremlins for you to combat. Don’t assume! Breath in, breath out, and, if need be, ask questions!

Interpretations

One of my downfalls is that I’ve never been able to handle criticism well, and this carried over to my writing. When I first started writing I interpreted any and all critiques as negative and got upset if someone told me I could improve here or there. I know now these people were only trying to help me grow as a writer, but back then I interpreted their comments in the wrong light.

How do you interpret critique and feedback? Does it hurt your feelings when someone says anything less than, “This is amazing!” Try analyzing why it is you’re so upset and put yourself in other people’s shoes. Are there comments negative, or insightful? Are they telling you flat out that your writing sucks? Look up other reviews they may have given and see if those reviews match yours. If the reviews are coming from family and friends think about how they interact with you on a daily basis. Do they, at any other time, try to intentionally make you feel bad about yourself? If not, why would they try to with this one thing?

Nowadays I am good about handling critique because I no longer interpret them as negative. I know that the reviewers are trying to help me improve and try my best to not misconstrue their intentions.

Limiting Beliefs

A limiting belief is a thought that tries to tell you that you can only jump this high or run that far. It puts a limiter on your potential to succeed and prevents you from reaching your full capacity. Examples of limiting beliefs include:

“I can only write [this] well.”

“I’ll never be a better writer than so-and-so.”

“XYZ Company will never choose my book. I shouldn’t even query!”

Well, if that’s the attitude you have, of course XYZ Company isn’t going to choose your book! Thinking you can’t accomplish something is the main ingredient in the recipe for failure. When those limiting beliefs creep into your mind, face them head on. Don’t let them prohibit you from succeeding. Remember: when you think you can, you know you can!

Fighting GAILs is an ongoing battle. I still have them. In fact, I’m fighting a few right now. All I can do is remember that I can overcome my gremlins, assumptions, interpretations and limiting beliefs and that knowing what they are is half the battle. I hope this post helps you overcome your own GAILS, whatever they may be.