Writing’s my answer to everything. I already can hear you all screaming. But hear me out here.
Sometimes, when something unexpected happens, frustration is almost an automatic response. It’s only normal. Using a writing analogy, you had an objective, a desire and something is trying to stop you from getting what you want.
It could be as minor as watching a TV show. You get the dishes done, shower, grab the glass of Malbec and rush to your couch. You turn on the TV, but there’s a cable outage in your area. You rage, don’t they know you NEED to watch Talking Dead? You still haven’t recovered from The Walking Dead season premiere last night. How are you supposed to grieve for ***** (to protect the poor soul who has not watched) with other fans? Now you won’t know what Norman Reedus had to say until the morning. Ugh.
You want to rage. You want to scream. You want to punch a stuffed bunny in its glassy eye.
What if instead of bugging out, you should try to remember that article on character development you haven’t had time to read or that book on the habits of highly effective people? What if you finally picked up the phone and made that call? To you know to who! What if you organized your drawers instead or started to crochet that infinity scarf you wanted for so long?
OR, bear with me here, you could be writing that book that’s been swimming in your head…
Recently, I experienced and outage…of sorts and I was upset about it. I came up with the idea to find other things to concentrate on. Things I could do instead of turning rage-green and Hulk-smashing my way through the living room. I used that time to read a book. A book that has already proven a difference maker, one I can actually apply to my writing. Remember how I told you that I like to try new things with my writing?
This unexpected outage-of-sorts couldn’t come at a better time with NaNoWriMo around the corner. Last year, I was a winner. This year I am planning to repeat! So I’ve stepped up my planning for J vs. 50,000 words in 30 days.
Sometimes unexpected things happen, not so you can go crazy and tear out your hair, but because your attention is needed in some other area of your life. There is something you’ve been wanting/needing to do but have been too distracted by the noise. Next time something drops out of the blue — and please know I don’t mean something major — stop and think, what else can I do with this time?
So what would you spend your outage-of-sorts doing?
Nice post. If the outage were of electricity, and my laptop had no power, I’d probably still write, by hand (ugh!). Actually I’ve found a different style when I hand-write and it sometimes solves things I can’t get through otherwise.
Or I would read…if my kindle were dead, I’d actually start on that huge pile of purchased books..many signed by the author at Thrillerfest but never actually opened.
Or maybe take the dogs for a walk, or go for a bikeride…no, I’d read!
Tammy,
So true! There is so much we can do. I’ve been reading this book and taking hand notes, I never realized how much your hands hurt after or maybe I’m holding the pen too tight. LOL. I will need to try that when I get stuck though. I’m so going to steal your method and see if it works for me. I love trying new things with my writing.
I do find that walking can help me work out through things as well but reading is at times best, especially if you read something completely different than what you’re writing. <3
so true. life is full of demands we’d probably never choose to spend much time on, and would avoid entirely if we could. having writing as a default reponse to stress is like having an evening out. only writing leaves me with something extra, something accomplished.
I agree with this too! It’s a sense that you did actually something with that extra time and made it work for the best. That’s the best feeling. The other day I told my writing-sprint partner I was too exhausted to write and her reply was, do you want to write anyway? In my head I was like man, I just said I’m tired but my fingers were like I can try and I got like 600 words in the first 30 minutes and I was like wow, I would have just been browsing on Twitter but I got all this done. It was awesome! Mary is awesome for making me. 🙂