Five years ago there was a plethora of articles on Medium about getting up very early and doing whatever it takes to get your creative work done. At the time I was prizing myself out of bed by 6am to write for an hour before my day job or before I spent the rest of the day caring for my elderly parents.
I loved early morning writing, though I loathed getting out of bed and have always been a bit of a snooze queen.
I remember being utterly exhausted throughout the latter half of 2017 as I juggled the day job, my parents, blogging and working on a novel. For many years I described my life state as being one step above exhaustion.
In the last year I am seeing a lot more articles about burnout, ranging from writers with many books to their name, to successful podcasters, to bloggers, including many people I follow here on Substack. I am now suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and am increasingly limited in how much I can write.
Currently I am undergoing therapy to re-regulate my autonomous nervous system (which can get dis-regulated by anxiety as well as covid). It involves listening to classical music that that has been altered to re-train the inner ear muscles to focus on different frequencies. Because of this, you can only do it for a few minutes at a time.
In a recent session, it was starting to feel uncomfortable but I thought would tough it out as there was only a minute left. The therapist noticed that my face had dropped from a calm, happy smile to something more serious and stopped the process.
She posed the question – how many times had I overridden what my body was telling me in order to push through and get something done?
Of course, I could think of hundreds of occasions from throughout my life.
This made me think: when should you push through and just get the writing done, and when should you rest?
When to push through
Answer: when resistance is trying to stop you.
As writers, we are all subject to resistance. This might be the little voice in your head which tells you stay in your cosy bed or that the story you are working on has been told before and that you have nothing remarkable to add.
When that inner gremlin whispers doubts in your ear, you should push through and continue. By the end of your writing session you will feel joy and relief that you’ve done the work.
Many writers suffer fear near the completion of a project or when it is getting close to showing their work to someone else. If you have a number of incomplete projects then this also suggests resistance and you should try to continue.
In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert gives a lovely analogy about fear. She says that fear is just a part of being creative, it’s never going to go away so you just have to take it along for the ride. She talks about a road trip where fear is welcome to join everyone in the car but it doesn’t get to make any decisions, whether that is deciding the route or what radio station to listen to.
So load your fear and your writing into your car and keep gently driving.
When to rest
Rest when you are exhausted.
Rest when your body is screaming at you to stop.
Rest next time, when hindsight tells you that you have over done it this time.
In 2019, I was going through the editor’s feedback of my first novel, getting it ready for publication. I had to do some very delicate changes to change the way my main character spoke to the other characters, but without changing her underlying pain and emotion. It was like doing laser focussed surgery on the manuscript – one false move and I could break the story.
At the same time my elderly father was in hospital for ten weeks and my mother had to have surgery. Supporting him and my mother decimated my writing time. What could have been an enjoyable process to go through the edits became a battle against everything else that life was throwing at me.
There were many occasions when I worked on it in the evening, when my brain was already bushed from my day job and I felt so tired. I pushed myself to do another few minutes or another half an hour. The next day I would show up to work physically shattered.
Looking back, this was not a healthy option for me.
Now, because of chronic fatigue, I don’t push through. If I’m tired, I stop.
Sometimes, when I go to do a task, whether that is writing or anything else, if I don’t feel I have enough energy, I admit defeat and come back to it another time. Usually, in the next couple of days, it becomes doable.
What if you have no choice but to continue
In the therapy session that I mentioned earlier, I made the point that if writers didn’t override their reptilian limbic response to discomfort, there would be nothing to read!
The therapist said yes, there are times when you are in a situation when it might be necessary to continue – but then, when the task is done, you need to do something which is restful and restorative for your body.
Julia Cameron talks about the need to take regular artist dates – where you do something fun and nurturing that replenishes your well rather than continually taking from it. I have to admit that I was always bad at doing artist dates – and then I would find myself mentally and physically depleted.
How can you nurture yourself?
How can you compensate your body when you have demanded a lot from it?
How can you thank and love your body, your brain and your mind?
There is no easy answer
This is one of those situations where there aren’t always clear-cut answers.
I would not have been able to publish my first novel if I hadn’t been extremely committed and wrote even when I was too busy and too tired. I don’t regret doing that work. Mentally, it was important to me to get the book into the world.
However, it is now taking a lot longer to get the next two books done because I can’t work on them in the same way. I am learning the hard way, that without good health, it is much harder to do stuff that is dear to my heart.
Recently, the local soccer team, Luton Town, were promoted to the English Premier League. At the deciding match, one of the players collapsed on the pitch. In the post-match interview, in spite of the jubilation at winning and the £170m of riches coming their way, the manager said what matters first is your health and family. I’ve never heard a top end football manager say this.
By all means, use the nooks and crannies of your day to make progress with your writing. But also give time to your physical and mental health.
Plodding gently
Cali x
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Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash
What about you? How to you take care of yourself while getting the writing done?
Leave a comment. Your tip might be just the thing that another writer needs to read.
This is so true. Such a hard one to figure out. I try to show up and do a tiny amount if possible and sometimes I just have to accept that it ain’t going to happen. Especially if I have been sick and celebrate the small wins and the progress I have made. Today, I am going to remind myself that I want to write and explore the story. Nobody is forcing me. And maybe something fun and exciting might happen next... If I start thinking I ‘must’ do something, then inevitably it gets harder and harder to do and fall back into ‘suffering’ for my art. The balance is a tightrope
Sending you so much love. I think I’m learning I never need to push, but I also need to stay with the discomfort as lovingly as possible. Bringing loving kindness to the stuck place rather than force.