Most of us find ourselves beset by a dreary attitude once and a while. The holidays—with all the stress, family obligations, and expectations good or not-so-good—can pack a hefty punch to one’s psychic equilibrium. But things get especially dire when the season delivers a double whammy, like like when you’re trying to launch a new project amid the post-partum blues. The year’s end itself can sometimes bring on that post-partum feeling of emptiness and dislocation.
If these are troubles you deal with, you are certainly not alone. All kinds of endings (and beginnings, too, come to think of it…) plague me with despondency. Having been there many times, I’ve got a few helpful hints to share. Please add your own suggestions in the comments section. We need all the tools we can get to keep our productivity going!
As writers, we know it’s not fun to find ourselves stumped on a scene halfway through a book that’s been going well (more or less) up to that point. When this happens to me, it usually means I’ve procrastinated on some essential piece of research that can’t be delayed any longer. For example, 200 pages into my novel, Our Orbit, it came time to write the scene in which two young girls visit their father in prison. I had put off drafting this episode as long as possible, but once I got out from behind my desk and went to visit a prison myself, that influx of information gave me the confidence to send words flowing freely out my fingers and onto the page.
Such blocks to the writing process are bad enough. What’s even worse—in my case, at any rate—is the paralyzing letdown that lies in wait after the completion of an important project. I call this “post-partum writer’s block.” It can devolve into a fallow period of months’ duration.
This is understandable up to a point: there’s bound to be a sense of dangling at loose ends after a big job that has occupied one’s mind for a long time, perhaps years. One positive interpretation is that the springs of creativity need to recharge before one feels ready to start something new. Unfortunately, a chorus of nagging voices may tend to overwhelm the mind:
Why aren’t you writing? How long can this drag on, this doing-nothing?? You really don’t have another book in you, after all! I knew it—everybody always knew it!!
On & on, ad nauseum…
Some of my writer-friends swear by planning ahead for these pitfalls: keep the next project simmering on the back burner—make notes, maybe an outline, engage with the characters just enough so they’re ready to pop when the time is ripe. As soon as a front burner frees up, move the simmering project forward and carry on like nothing has changed.
Voilà —post-partum blues outsmarted!
This is surely sage advice…indeed, it’s a bit too wise for the likes of me. My psyche seems to require a fallow time to grieve, as it were, for the fruit of my imagination that is now separate and independent. For the characters that have grown up and moved on. Or maybe for my unrealistic expectation that life would glow forever golden once I managed to publish the novel. This grieving process seems to entail a very low word count for as long as it takes.
I don’t mean to discount my friends’ advice. Shifting a new project rapidly to the front burner may prove very helpful for some. I’ve actually followed this advice as best I can. But when I need more time to get the next creative endeavor up and going, here are some of the things that make my days pass productively and hopefully hasten the joy of finding my way back to the writing zone—
• Don’t begrudge yourself plenty of rest. Other obligations permitting, sleep as much as you like at least a few nights per week. Ditto on relaxation. I would recommend avoiding addictions (especially electronic ones), but if TV dramas help you unwind, now’s a fine time to soak up that expert plotting without self-reproach.
• Go outside for a few minutes every day, minimum. It’s true that winter is setting in across North America, but try to find a sheltered place to get a bit of sunshine on your skin.
• In a related move, get some exercise whether indoors or out. Your next book is likely to require a lot of unhealthful sitting, so shape up now in order to withstand those long writing sessions to come.
• It’s fashionable these days to recommend meditation for whatever ails us. Personally, I never cared for it—in the past when I tried it, I always fell asleep, or just wound up fretting over the same problems I’d fretted over all day without benefit of meditation. More recently, though, I’ve allowed myself to sit and count breaths for a modest ten minutes at a stretch without any big expectations. I find it does give rise to a serene state of mind.
• Indulge yourself in something you’ve never done before: try a new craft or sport, listen to some foreign-language lessons, visit a place you’ve never seen. Or if novelty doesn’t attract you, page back to an old neglected hobby, a creative road perhaps tried but not taken in the past: quilt a pillow, build a birdhouse, bake a pie.
• And no matter what, keep journaling! It doesn’t matter what you write—some of it will no doubt be drivel, but the first sentence for your next book may turn up there soon. And your fingers will stay limber for the words you’ll eventually want to share with the world.
Read everything. Take time to enjoy other people’s words without feeling guilty that you aren’t writing your own.
I love this suggestion, Nicole! Appreciating others’ words is always good advice, and steering clear of guilt—or envy, which may be worse—is icing on the cupcake. Guess I’d better dig up some tips for overcoming guilt and envy!
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Thanks very much for stopping by and sharing. Happy holidays to you & yours!
Enjoyed the suggestions, Anesa. Here’s to a wordy new year!
And the same to you, Sarah. Here’s to many pages in 2015!
I do like ‘Post Partum’. It alerted me and sent me running to my old chum and standby, Google, to track down the etymology!
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Creative writing can often be confused with the simple re-cycling of ideas, however subliminal, which were bestowed upon us by those clever people, the Greeks, oh, and some of the Romans too; Horace comes to mind. That’s not to take anything away, at all, from subsequent writers down the centuries whose prolific contributions to literature, poetry, film – even soaps, have gone a long way to forging the civilised and inclusive society in which we are privileged to live – in the West at least.
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We all suffer from writers block but that’s the price we pay for doing what we do. Some overcome it with drugs or drink, like O’Henry or Kerouac Others wait for the ‘Muse’. Others just give up in frustration. Me? I try to reconcile my own philosophy upon the narrative in hand to the piece I’m working on and come to some sort of conclusion first, then go back and fill in the details. I find that easier.
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Prayer helps some. Meditation does, too, though this can easily turn to deep thought if not handled right and rather negate the exercise.
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My alter ego, Burton Wood touches, obliquely, on the subject in the piece ‘Writers Cramp’. His answer is to go out and get a mundane job and bring yourself back to reality though this can have its drawbacks as you will see if you read it.
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Many thanks for notification of your post. Your ideas have stimulated at least one creative writer and he remains,
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Your humble follower,
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Fred Webster http://www.fredwebster.co.uk
I like your philosophical approach to writing and its difficulties, Fred. Prayer may, indeed, be productive for many people, and keeping in touch with reality is always wise, in my experience—whatever it takes! Thank you again for visiting my humble blog and sharing your perspective. I encourage everyone to take a peek at your work via the link you provide.
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Here’s wishing you a wonderful Christmas and all good things in 2015.
Fred adds the following revision: << The reference to the piece 'Writers Cramp' should read 'Zen and the Art of Tele-communicating'. Doh!Although the first one is worth a read, but only to the initiated! 🙂 >>
Anesa,
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Thanks for that.
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A Very Merry Christmas to you and to all your contributors and may 2015 bring us every success.
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Fred.
Anesa,
We’re discussing what it takes to break the writing vacuum aren’t we? Various and differing solutions were postulated, all of which were valid, of course, in their way, but I hadn’t considered ‘personal loss’. That led me on to ‘inspiration’, an under-used word, when I heard that a dear friend of mine had passed away.
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I had a call from Pasadena two days before Christmas telling me that Joe Cocker, the blues singer, had died in Colorado. You may know his work. He and I go back 50 years. He was my best man. His passing helped me to overcome that ‘Post-Partum Writers Block’ and I penned this quatrain in his memory and sent it to his family.
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In some small way it could serve as a suitable epitaph but that’s not to be confused with the satisfaction the writing of it gave me, though some may think there is something of the pastiche about it.
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However, I share it with you now.
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He was
Deepest in feeling – highest in rank
The freest and first in the band
Music’s own nobleman – friendly and frank
A man with his heart in his hand.
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Fred Webster.
I’m honored that you’re sharing the memorial quatrain with us here. It certainly evokes the spirit of a very special musician. How remarkable to hear that he had been best man at your wedding! I’d be delighted to post a photo or two, if you have some you’d like to send along.
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Many thanks.
Anesa,
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I’m not very good with photographs. I prefer to recall my memories through the written word. I’d have to go into my attic and trawl through the files. It’s like a 19th century solicitor’s office up there. Everything covered in dust and a patina of age. Dickensian!
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There is a reference to our wedding in the piece ‘IN MEMORIUM’ under Sketches on the website. Diverting here – there is another piece called ‘Ars Gratia Artis’ under Poetry which portrays my wife in the very best light and comments upon her art, (he said-and he’s not supposed to be very good with photos, the old fraud!)
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Fred http://www.fredwebster.co.uk
Many thanks for that, Fred! I, too, grew tired of wielding a camera many years ago and have made the most of word-based memories instead. Nonetheless, I seem to have a vast number of unsorted boxes of snapshots and negatives and no doubt even some undeveloped rolls of film. Quite similar to the stash in your attic, I suspect!
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Now they’ll probably school us on the virtues of digital photography, preferably via one’s phone. And I suppose they’ll be right!
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But I’m with you, anyways. Have a lovely New Year’s Eve!
My 14 year old granddaughter was here this morning, sorting out my computer files, updating my profile and ‘de-fragging’ the hard drive – as she calls it.
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‘……Granddad ??’ she said, squinting at the screen.
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‘Yes…’
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What’s an undeveloped roll of film ?’ she asked without a hint of irony.
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‘Mutare tempora !’ 🙂
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Fred.