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silveradept[Welcome back to December Days. This year, thanks to a suggestion from alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a few days left.]
Throughumadoshi, the latest in what appears to be a chain of quite a few links, came a rehabilitation program for writing injuries. These are not physical writing injuries, like stress on one's joints and parts because of typing or scribbling too much, but the mental injury, the thing that happens that makes writing difficult and painful, rather than the smooth flow that it was before.
I like the immediate framing of "a writing injury such as this happens when you take the 'shoulds' too far to heart," because those "shoulds" are always there, regardless of whether it's for what you are doing physically, creatively, sustainably, or anything else. There are a lot of "shoulds" hammering at us, and most of them have an external source that we have internalized, whether by media, by the society around, or in reaction to something that's brain or body-related that we may have little to no real control over (without specialized help in the form of medication or assistive devices, and even then, maybe not). There's a lot of advice about living your life going around that is essentially this:
Except that there's also those people who come up to you and say "I'd like to poison your mind / With wrong ideas that appeal to you / though I am not unkind." Or: "I'd like to change your mind / by hitting it with a rock / though I am not unkind." Which makes it harder to be yourself and to do the things that you know how to do well. Or to believe in the prospect that You Are Good Enough.
It is entirely possible to get burnt out on writing, just like any other creative endeavour. A lot of the classic cases of burnout tend to be about writing to deadlines, or, in the case of many authors who don't have publishers, doing the marketing and the selling and the table-sitting at conventions and bookstores and all the other things that are not doing the writing. Sometimes it can be a nice break to do some of those things, but it's an entire other job, and there's a reason why publishing houses exist to take those burdens off of a creator. If what you want is for someone to keep creating, it's best to get rid of or delegate the things that impede that process.
Writing rooms can exist for the purpose of closing away the outside world, even if temporarily, so as to get the creative work done. But they can also start feeling like prisons if there isn't a whole lot of output from that space and the writing blocks start to close in. Once certain things start becoming associated with a space, it can be hard to remove them or transmute them into something else. Humans are really good pattern-creators, to the point where we'll make a pattern out of nothing or random events, because our brains really hate having to admit to chaos, because chaos is, by nature, unpredictable, unavoidable, and often detrimental. If we're supposed to be able to control ourselves and our surroundings, admitting to the presence of chaos sounds a lot like defeat or giving up.
That feeling gets covered in this rehabilitation guide as well, in the part where it says you must take an enforced break from writing. Part of it is because the prohibition comes with a second prohibition that you're not allowed to talk negatively about yourself because you are taking a break from writing. It's also the insistence that the injury that happened means you have to rest before it can begin to work again. Taking a rest has become stigmatized in the States, because there's an insidious idea that a person is only useful to the society when they are producing something or doing work. Despite, we might note, that even the Being Represented by the Tetragrammaton is explicitly noted to have taken a rest for a full day after spending six doing labor (and said that his followers should do the same, and then replicate it so that the seventh year was also a time of rest.) Despite earning leave for rest while sick and leave to use do as not to constantly be at work, and labor protections to ensure the workday is "eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for whatever we want," there's a glorification and insistence that working every available moment of your time is the only way to get ahead and make sure that you have enough to eventually stop work after a few decades. Taking time to rest gets you accused of not caring enough about your career success and the success of your workplace.
The analogue of muscle repair is really a smart idea, Those who have had this injuries understand it and further understand that reinjuring yourself because you tried to do too much too soon is a really common thing that happens. And that usually means a longer stay of enforced low activity so that things can heal properly. And then, from there, a nice gradual return to full activity, keeping in mind not to try and overtax yourself and to keep your space as "should" - free as possible.
Yes, it will look like everyone else is doing more than you are (the linked song acknowledges the existence of sex) while you are waiting to get healed up, but you know? Maybe, if you're still feeling injured, it's time to catch up on your to be read pile, or watch a new series you've been meaning ti get into, or something else that will keep you engaged, even if you're not creating right then. And, slowly, the creating will return, and then all those plotbunnies can get out and be free-range.
Take care of yourselves out there.
alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a few days left.]Through
umadoshi, the latest in what appears to be a chain of quite a few links, came a rehabilitation program for writing injuries. These are not physical writing injuries, like stress on one's joints and parts because of typing or scribbling too much, but the mental injury, the thing that happens that makes writing difficult and painful, rather than the smooth flow that it was before.I like the immediate framing of "a writing injury such as this happens when you take the 'shoulds' too far to heart," because those "shoulds" are always there, regardless of whether it's for what you are doing physically, creatively, sustainably, or anything else. There are a lot of "shoulds" hammering at us, and most of them have an external source that we have internalized, whether by media, by the society around, or in reaction to something that's brain or body-related that we may have little to no real control over (without specialized help in the form of medication or assistive devices, and even then, maybe not). There's a lot of advice about living your life going around that is essentially this:
There's only one thing that I know how to do well
And I've often been told that you only can do
What you know how to do well
And that's be you
Be what you're like
Be like yourself
Except that there's also those people who come up to you and say "I'd like to poison your mind / With wrong ideas that appeal to you / though I am not unkind." Or: "I'd like to change your mind / by hitting it with a rock / though I am not unkind." Which makes it harder to be yourself and to do the things that you know how to do well. Or to believe in the prospect that You Are Good Enough.
It is entirely possible to get burnt out on writing, just like any other creative endeavour. A lot of the classic cases of burnout tend to be about writing to deadlines, or, in the case of many authors who don't have publishers, doing the marketing and the selling and the table-sitting at conventions and bookstores and all the other things that are not doing the writing. Sometimes it can be a nice break to do some of those things, but it's an entire other job, and there's a reason why publishing houses exist to take those burdens off of a creator. If what you want is for someone to keep creating, it's best to get rid of or delegate the things that impede that process.
Writing rooms can exist for the purpose of closing away the outside world, even if temporarily, so as to get the creative work done. But they can also start feeling like prisons if there isn't a whole lot of output from that space and the writing blocks start to close in. Once certain things start becoming associated with a space, it can be hard to remove them or transmute them into something else. Humans are really good pattern-creators, to the point where we'll make a pattern out of nothing or random events, because our brains really hate having to admit to chaos, because chaos is, by nature, unpredictable, unavoidable, and often detrimental. If we're supposed to be able to control ourselves and our surroundings, admitting to the presence of chaos sounds a lot like defeat or giving up.
That feeling gets covered in this rehabilitation guide as well, in the part where it says you must take an enforced break from writing. Part of it is because the prohibition comes with a second prohibition that you're not allowed to talk negatively about yourself because you are taking a break from writing. It's also the insistence that the injury that happened means you have to rest before it can begin to work again. Taking a rest has become stigmatized in the States, because there's an insidious idea that a person is only useful to the society when they are producing something or doing work. Despite, we might note, that even the Being Represented by the Tetragrammaton is explicitly noted to have taken a rest for a full day after spending six doing labor (and said that his followers should do the same, and then replicate it so that the seventh year was also a time of rest.) Despite earning leave for rest while sick and leave to use do as not to constantly be at work, and labor protections to ensure the workday is "eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for whatever we want," there's a glorification and insistence that working every available moment of your time is the only way to get ahead and make sure that you have enough to eventually stop work after a few decades. Taking time to rest gets you accused of not caring enough about your career success and the success of your workplace.
The analogue of muscle repair is really a smart idea, Those who have had this injuries understand it and further understand that reinjuring yourself because you tried to do too much too soon is a really common thing that happens. And that usually means a longer stay of enforced low activity so that things can heal properly. And then, from there, a nice gradual return to full activity, keeping in mind not to try and overtax yourself and to keep your space as "should" - free as possible.
Yes, it will look like everyone else is doing more than you are (the linked song acknowledges the existence of sex) while you are waiting to get healed up, but you know? Maybe, if you're still feeling injured, it's time to catch up on your to be read pile, or watch a new series you've been meaning ti get into, or something else that will keep you engaged, even if you're not creating right then. And, slowly, the creating will return, and then all those plotbunnies can get out and be free-range.
Take care of yourselves out there.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-30 04:19 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2018-12-30 07:00 pm (UTC)