Anyone else stop writing due to a stressful family situation? How did you get back into it, if the situation shows no signs of easing up any time soon?
Too Stressed to Write
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Get away, even if only for a while. Go to McDonalds with your laptop or a notebook and pen. Or the library. Or the rec center.
I had a friend in community theater years ago. She was in an abusive marriage. She could not sing.
She tried, but could not.
Eventually the marriage ended, and she found her footing.
Guess what came back?
She tried, but could not.
Eventually the marriage ended, and she found her footing.
Guess what came back?
Second thought -
Profound grief can trip new wires in our brains, sometimes they are the creative wires.
What I think, and YMMV, is that you need to allow yourself (and your whole self) to be where it needs to be. Sometimes the creativity comes, sometimes it doesn't, but the last thing you need is to put blame on yourself if you feel like you should be able to do more than you find yourself doing.
Profound grief can trip new wires in our brains, sometimes they are the creative wires.
What I think, and YMMV, is that you need to allow yourself (and your whole self) to be where it needs to be. Sometimes the creativity comes, sometimes it doesn't, but the last thing you need is to put blame on yourself if you feel like you should be able to do more than you find yourself doing.
IMHO if you are too stressed to write, then I think you should not give yourself a hard time and force it.
Are you able to give yourself some me time? If it is possible, I would suggest you try to decompress and relax, which I know may be easier said than done. Are you getting enough sleep? I know that if I am sleep deprived, I have no hope of writing a word. My advice would be to try to look after yourself. And what Dennis says upthread.
Are you able to give yourself some me time? If it is possible, I would suggest you try to decompress and relax, which I know may be easier said than done. Are you getting enough sleep? I know that if I am sleep deprived, I have no hope of writing a word. My advice would be to try to look after yourself. And what Dennis says upthread.
I totally relate to this problem. I find one of two things helps...either force myself to just struggle through (sometimes after a rough start, the flow comes), or just accept it's not happening, do something to de-stress a bit, and get back to it. Best of luck.
I'm getting way too much sleep, day and night. Ironically, the stressful situation I'm going through mirrors something I just spent three months writing about in a novel. Now that life is imitating art, I can see how I totally failed to scratch the surface of how stressful it can be. If I ever get back to writing about it, I'll have a lot more to express.
Nothing lasts forever, especially stressful situations. Try to do something that involves writing, or helping the craft. Reread scenes of your wip, read a book, write something. Because, for me anyway, if I'm already in a crappy situation and I'm not writing, I just feel worse about myself and the situation because I feel as if I'm not doing anything productive. It might help you out too to be doing SOMETHING related to writing.
Make writing part of your grieving process. Some people can lose themselves in a fantasy world during times of stress, and write great volumes of fiction. I am not this way, and probably you aren't either, or else you wouldn't be asking this question. But this doesn't have to stop you from writing about the present. I journal, and it has never failed me as a coping mechanism. I have been bereft, I have been devastated, I have grieved seven hearts worth of grief; and while I have not always been able to write a story or draw a picture or eat a decent meal, I have been able to pull out my journal and record that today sucked worse than any day before it ever has. This is a long standing habit for me, and maybe it will become so for you, but it doesn't have to. You can pull out a legal pad, write an angry page, and shred it immediately if you need. It's still writing. It still counts.
Hi popmuze,
If your sleep pattern isn't from a medical condition, try sleep deprivation. That sounds more harsh than it is! It's a basic tool of behavioral therapists, and just means that you schedule your sleep and keep to it, making sure you get the same 7-8 hours, no more and no less, going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time. Always. This isn't practical for everyone. But too much sleep over a longer period of time is a possible sign of depression. Ironically, it really does wonders to cut back on the sleep. The quality of the sleep you do get goes up.
Anyway, back to your original issue of writing when stressed. I soooo here you. I'm having one of those days today. I'm still going to sit down and do a minimum amount of writing, knowing it might be distracted stuff I cut tomorrow. The point is to keep my hand in. I barely have the energy to spare to do this, but I've decided to do it.
I agree with others that a change of scenery can help you work a little, or just walking away from the work for a time. Most of us fit in writing around our regular lives, and if you can't manage that right now, it's okay. I don't journal in the typical way, but I do start every morning jotting down notes about the writing I want to do that day. If I'm stressed or know stresses are coming that day, I note that down too, and it does help a bit to remind myself I'm not going to be able to call up 100% of my energy for the writing. Maybe something like that will help you too. Keep things in perspective. As others said, don't beat yourself up! Life does that for you....
If your sleep pattern isn't from a medical condition, try sleep deprivation. That sounds more harsh than it is! It's a basic tool of behavioral therapists, and just means that you schedule your sleep and keep to it, making sure you get the same 7-8 hours, no more and no less, going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time. Always. This isn't practical for everyone. But too much sleep over a longer period of time is a possible sign of depression. Ironically, it really does wonders to cut back on the sleep. The quality of the sleep you do get goes up.
Anyway, back to your original issue of writing when stressed. I soooo here you. I'm having one of those days today. I'm still going to sit down and do a minimum amount of writing, knowing it might be distracted stuff I cut tomorrow. The point is to keep my hand in. I barely have the energy to spare to do this, but I've decided to do it.
I agree with others that a change of scenery can help you work a little, or just walking away from the work for a time. Most of us fit in writing around our regular lives, and if you can't manage that right now, it's okay. I don't journal in the typical way, but I do start every morning jotting down notes about the writing I want to do that day. If I'm stressed or know stresses are coming that day, I note that down too, and it does help a bit to remind myself I'm not going to be able to call up 100% of my energy for the writing. Maybe something like that will help you too. Keep things in perspective. As others said, don't beat yourself up! Life does that for you....
Replace 'family' with 'work' and my answer would be yes. I got around it by realising that writing is one of my ways of coping with stress. Even if I'm not writing for a major WIP, just writing a few hundred words of something can help to reset the ol' grey matter and allow me to then cope with whatever's been stressing me.
I think if I had family stress, I would have to take my laptop and go sit in a library or café or anywhere other than home, just to write. Or if the family life elsewhere, use home as my fortress of solitude. Let the phone go to voicemail and not accept visitors for a while.
During one part of this ongoing situation, I was actually taking notes about what I was seeing and feeling. Then it got to be too much. Listening to music does transport me back to a better time. I had a writing assignment recently that enabled me to sink into something else for a few days. But this is the longest period of time I haven't written fiction in forty years. I've got two novels and two scripts that could use my attention, but instead I play spider solitaire to kill the time and kill my mind.
Start by making 'me' time. I found the Artist's Way incredibly helpful for this. Most people seem to equate this book with the 'Morning Pages' but - in your situation I think you *might* find that part of it hard. But the exercises (she suggests you do about at least 50% of them) and the Artist Date are very helpful. Begin carving out time & space in the day for yourself, & then you can either add writing to that time/place or - create another time/place habit for writing. 5 minutes, one paragraph, that's enough.
Hi popmuze,
The two - life and the work - have become tangled up it sounds like. I've experienced this. This will take a while to work out, but it will. For me, it was and sometimes still is a lack of sleep, but it's probably the same thing. Your body and mind are just exhausted. You can try writing something else; I'd suggest another form entirely. If it appeals to you. Poetry, screenplay, whatever is so different that another part of your brain has to start working for you. That might help clear through the fog.
The two - life and the work - have become tangled up it sounds like. I've experienced this. This will take a while to work out, but it will. For me, it was and sometimes still is a lack of sleep, but it's probably the same thing. Your body and mind are just exhausted. You can try writing something else; I'd suggest another form entirely. If it appeals to you. Poetry, screenplay, whatever is so different that another part of your brain has to start working for you. That might help clear through the fog.
I feel your pain. I'm currently very stressed by a situation at my job, and it's gotten so bad that I can't make my daily 1000 words on my novel. One reason I came to this thread. I think the others have given good advice.
The biggest part of the problem is that when I'm writing a novel, if it's any good I tend to live inside the novel and disconnect from reality, even when I'm not writing. I can't afford to do that right now and for the foreseeable future. I had one non-fiction assignment which was a good break for a couple of days.
I'm too financially and emotionally stressed to write at the moment, and I don't see it changing any time soon. I have the scant comfort of knowing that if and when things settle down, writers block will probably be the least of my stresses. I know I can write under most pressures. It's just a matter of enduring the current state of things.
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