Heres What no One Tells You About Managing Stress as a Writer

Heres What no One Tells You About Managing Stress as a Writer Your deadlines are looming and your creative spark isnt catching fire. Youve poured more cups of coffee than anyone should reasonably drink and youre trying every trick in the book to induce the muse. Your thoughts run in circles trying to find the right words to type but youve deleted almost as many lines as youve typed.Like any job, writing for a living has its stressful moments. For the typical observer looking at the writing profession from the outside, its assumed that you spend your mornings at the coffee shop, wearing a fedora (okay, maybe thats a stereotype), chatting with the locals and languidly spending hours to find the perfect word for your eager audience.The truth, however, is quite different from that scenario. The writers who make a living at writing have deadlines and word count requirements that often require hundreds of words per hour and constant creativity, even if you only managed a few hours sleep last night. And thats in addition to the research that goes into what is written before words are even put on the page.Creativity is exhaustingWhile writers who do it as a hobby write whenever the mood hits or the muse visits, professional writers must write daily- regardless of how creative they feel. One of the great advantages to writing for a living is to work in your favorite place and set your own hours, but the daily need for boundless creativity also has its drawbacks, too. Especially for writers who have solid deadlines that must be met and several projects going at once.Professional writers often have solid deadlines and several projects going at once.One of my favorite quotes from Stephen King, in his part-memoir/part-instruction manual, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, is this one:There is a muse, but hes not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. Hes a basement kind of guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think its fair? I think its fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but hes got inspiration. Its right that you should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. Theres stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know.Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the CraftWhen I read that passage, I understand exactly what King is talking about, especially when he refers to grunt labor. In my own words (which are far less poetic than Kings), I feel he is referring to the work that must go into writing before the magic moments happen. Particularly, its important for a professional writer to understand that it wont be magical every time you write. The magic will happen and youll eventually write an amazing passage that people talk about for years to come. But you will have written hundreds of non-magical passages before getting to that point. Its just how it works.Most of the time while writing, it will be difficult to find the right words and will be hard to be creative when your mind is focused on the mundane details of life. Bills due, errands to run, children and spouse needing attention- the constant tug-of-war that happens in a writers mind between creativity and routine can be distracting. Sometimes, it can even be detrimental in the process of meeting multiple deadlines.Your daemon or genius is flightyIn a TedTalk aimed at artists in general, especially writers, Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert speaks of a time in Ancient Greece and Rome when people believed that creativity was a divine entity, separate from the artist himself or herself. In Greece, it was referred to as a daemon and in Rome, it was called a genius. In both cases, it was something outside of the artist- a supernatural thing living in the walls that would visit the artist to ensure those magic moments happen. And there might be things the artist could do to summon the genius, but there was never a guarantee the flighty thing would show up. Whether or not this happened, however, was beyond the artists control.Further in the discussion, Gilbert speaks of the changes that occurred with rational humanism and the belief that all the magical moments in art were a direct result of something the artist did or didnt do. She notes that this belief, which places all of the burden of creativity on the shoulders of the writer or artist, can produce extreme anxiety and a sense of failure in the inevitable moments when it doesnt happen. It can likewise produce extreme ego.Gilbert ends her talk wishing that artists (including writers) would return to the ancient understanding of genius to avoid the pressure that is placed on them in the creative cycle. In such, she reiterates Stephen Kings point that the magical moments wont always be there, and thats okay. The trick is to keep writing, to keep working, and eventually- your creative genius will pay a visit. But only on his or her own time schedule. Its a visit that cant be forced, even if youre wearing a fedora in a coffee shop.Uninterrupted time alone is crucialAnother method Ive observed thats useful in managing stress as a writer is to insist on some alone time to work and protect it fiercely. As a mother of three children, this becomes especially hard over school holidays and breaks- days that keep them running in and out of my office with various requests or complaints. Even when they insist, Ill be quiet, simply having another person in the room is distracting for me as a writer, which often makes the whole coffee shop routine difficult. Ive found very few coffee shops without a lot of other customers present.This insistence on alone ti me includes social media. I find that if I have notifications turned on in my social media or personal email accounts, the simple interruption of someone else seeking my attention is enough to completely destroy whatever magic moment I might have been achieving. Maybe this means that my genius is an introvert, I dont know, but I do know it slows down my writing process significantly when I allow these distractions to be present.Your preferred writing environment might be different than mine. However, my guess is that many professional writers share the need to fiercely protect their alone time to achieve their writing goals for the day. While its possible to write surrounded by noise and distractions, if youre like me, your best work will never come from that environment.A writers best work will never come from a loud, distracting environment.Read when youre not writingAnother way Ive found to cope with stress as a writer is to read. Reading is a relaxing activity for most people, b ut even more so for professional writers. Beyond the relaxing aspect of it, it is highly useful in building your skills (and therefore, your confidence) as a writer. The more you read, the more you are able to take in writing skills such as dialogue, description, and characterization- particularly if you are reading an amazing writer who has much to teach you.Heres how King puts it:You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. Its hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know its true. If I had a nickel for every person who ever told me he/she wanted to become a writer but didnt have time to read, I could buy myself a pretty good steak dinner. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you dont have the time to read, you dont have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.Reading is the creative center of a writers li fe. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in †¦ Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered anyway.Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft