Itchy Bitesized 36: Ten Ways to Survive the Writing-Life Blues

Whether they're caused by writing-specific difficulties, or personal or global grimness

If writing is central to your life - financially, psychologically or emotionally - then your writing life is always going to have its ups and downs. What’s more, if writing is central to your life, it may provide a refuge from other personal or global grimnesses but it’s also vulnerable to what those external forces do to your psyche.

I’ve blogged specifically about writer’s block, surviving the submission blues and what to do if everything in your writing life is not OK, and many other posts in the Process and Going Public and Writing Life sections of the newly-renovated Tool-kit tackle different writing-life difficulties.

And when it comes to tackling difficulties, don’t forget, paying supporters, that in your Itch of Writing Chat space, just about every Wednesday we have an Ask Me Anything session. Click the link to browse previous chats: the new one will be up soon.

Meanwhile, this is a round-up of things to try when any aspect of your writing life is stuck, miserable, hopeless or don’t-know-which-way-to-turn-ish. They’re roughly in order of scale, but feel free to try anything which resonates.

1. Drink, eat and move: Dehydration, low blood sugar and poor circulation affect your mood and concentration long before you’re aware of them. Do what you can to sleep, too, though I know for some that’s less controllable.

2. Be kind to yourself: cut yourself some slack; set aside the oughts, the shoulds, the diets and the hair shirts; make tasty food by the easiest means you know.

3. Let yourself believe that the writing life is hard, as is any life based on the incalculable business of human creativity and industry built on it. The fact that there are lives in the world which are infinitely, unimaginably harder does not negate the difficulties you’re experiencing.

4. Zoom out or zoom in: as described here by Carolyn Hax, repeating her advice about coping during the pandemic. Don’t think about the weeks-and-months timescale of your writing life, which seems so dishearening, overwhelming or just plain impossible. Either:

   1. zoom in: think about ‘your next task and only your next task, and don’t let your mind drift to the next thing’ - the rest can wait - or

   2. zoom out: ‘look at the ocean, the stars; think of humanity centuries ago. Think of what people have endured through history. Think of how spring and summer push through the soil whether we’re paying attention to them or not.’

5. Start an appreciation or enjoyment notebook*: pick a nice little book, not your habit notebook or a journal full of existing frets; write down five things which, just at the moment of writing, are good: the cool drink in your mouth, the warm sunshine on your legs, the memory of the story you read last night, the friend you’ll see tomorrow. You may have to push for numbers four and five, but it’s actually that mind-stretch which has the biggest longer-term effect. Do the same tomorrow, and the day after.

6. Set yourself a tiny, achievable writing challenge: a writing-yoga exercise; a one-page appointment-to-write-type (£) story; commit to writing a haiku every day for a week.

7. Set the current writing project aside for a specific length of time, and try planning, researching or drafting that daft, off-piste or not-my-genre writing you’ve always meant to try out and never got round to. The key here is our old friend SMART: the ‘A for achievable’ one is, well, achievable, provided you set your goal is something like, ‘Spend a week working on Story X’ not ‘Write a good story in a week’; the latter is just not wholly in your gift.

8. Refuel. If this feels like ‘wasting time’, remember that rest and recreation are as much a military duty as training ferociously and risking your life are. What is true of that human activity is just as true of ours.

   1. artist dates: you don’t have to leave home, and they don’t have to be about art

   2. nourishing reading of something far enough away from your own current projects that your comparative, competitive and book-trade voices don’t kick in

   3. making or listening to theatre or music

   4. easy creativity such as baking or simple crafting

   5. walk or cycle routes which are easy enough that you can keep your eyes and senses open to the moment

9. Try journalling or free-writing in and around the things in this Bitesized list which you’ve tried. Especially if you’re not a journal-keeper by nature, just use the pages to focus on the experience in the moment, and record it. Journals don’t have to be psychoanalysis, they can just be part of mindfulness made solid.

10. When you’re feeling clearer and calmer, if the way out of the blues hasn’t become clear, try some free-form coaching questions to explore the what/how/if of getting back into a current or new project.

Finally, when you are feeling stronger and more purposeful, you could consider if there are any in this list which one part of your mind is saying ‘OMG, no!’ to (£) - and do that.

*Call your appreciation notebook a gratitude diary if that suits you: personally, like Harriet Vane, feeling obliged to be grateful, even if I’ve created the obligation myself, makes me want to bite.