Reality Bites by Sharon T. Rose
In case you had ever wondered, Life has a way of of ruining our wonderfully-crafted schedules. We make appointments, construct our calendars, give promises, and then wham we reel from something unexpected.
Sometimes, it's a personal health matter, like a cold or a broken bone or sudden need for surgery. Sometimes, it's a family issue, like school, parents, spouse, death, or birth. Sometimes, it's the Day Job, with an extra project or the busy season or a promotion or downsizing.
As writers, we give ourselves strict deadlines and have high expectations of ourselves. We make sure to keep a schedule for writing, research, self-promotion, editing, advertising, and more. But every so often, we just can't keep that schedule.
Am I the only one who gets frustrated by that? Can I see a show of hands?
This post is a little late going up due to a sinus infection that came at exactly the wrong time. Worse, the sinus infection was my own fault, because I went into an allergy-laden situation knowingly and failed to take adequate precautionary measures. But that's not the big writing "fail" of my current life.
Mostly for fun and partly for extra income, I took on a temporary job in summer stock theater. I looked at my schedule and the rehearsal schedule, evaluated my time, and figured that I could do the show in the afternoons and evenings and write in the late mornings. It would work.
Wrong.
I wound up working 17-20 hours each day for three weeks, which included a one-hour commute each day. Every moment was filled with something: rehearsal, learning choreography, getting from one practice space to another ... oh, and eating and sleeping in brief snatches. I did not know what I was getting myself into, no way, no how.
My writing time was gone. I was so far beyond exhausted when I got home each night (or morning) that I couldn't even think. For the first time in my life, my characters were silent. My fingers were still. And it took me a week to throw in the towel, stubborn mule that I am. I declared a hiatus, the death-knell of serialized work.
I write serial fiction, which means that I update my website three times each week with a new, 1,000-word installment of a long-form novel. I try to have a small buffer of around three updates, but often I write the "page" just before it's due to go up. It's fun and challenging for me, and I really like the format. But here you can readily see one of the downsides: when Life Attacks, I'm left hanging in the wind.
Allow me to share some insights from my experiences with you.
Allow yourself to fail. We're human. At least once in our lives, things are going to splat on the Windshield of Life. And really, it's OK. We have high expectations of ourselves, and that's good. But too high an expectation leads to perfectionism and ulcers. Take a deep breath, and release it slowly. Repeat. One more time. It will be alright.
Reevaluate your schedule. Be sure to factor in the new time sink, and give yourself some grace. If you need to lighten your load because of a long-term situation, do so. Don't kill yourself trying to keep a workload that no longer matches the 24 hours you have each day. If the distraction was short-term, then get back in the saddle and ride on. Be honest about what you can and can't do going forward.
Plan ahead, but be reasonable. If whatever threw off your writing was preventable, try to determine what you can do better for the next time it may come around. If whatever happened wasn't predictable, don't beat yourself up over it; it wasn't something you could have changed or mitigated. For my summer job, I really had no way of knowing how much time I would lose for two reasons: there were things I didn't know about going into the production, and I'd never done a show this huge before. Next time, however, I'll be prepared and write a huge buffer.
Know when to get help. Communication is key. Let others know what's going on in your life. Don't think that you have to do everything yourself or that you can't appear "weak." That's malarkey and you know it. Personally, I hate delaying my updates by even a minute, so a hiatus gives me serious conniptions. But I had to do it, so I let my readers know and gave them as much information as I could. Email your editors, post to your crit group's board, call your #amwriting buddies. It's OK to admit that something came up.
Don't get discouraged. We creative types are prone to blowing things out of proportion. Don't give me that look; I'm one of you, so I can speak with authority. It is not the end of the world. You missed a deadline. Big deal. It happens to all of us. Maybe it was being two weeks late on something voluntary, and maybe it was missing the last step in a deal-breaking contract. Even if you just watched your entire writing career flush away, it's not the end. You can always pick up the pieces and start over. Deep breaths, friends.
When life throws you a fastball, make lemonade. Or something like that. Not every "catastrophe" is an all-bad thing. Often, we can mine silver from it, such as new insight on how to write grieving characters, or how to add a little more chaos to our plots. Maybe we gain new appreciation for coffee on the porch while watching the sunrise.
Take heart, my friends. Reality bites hards, but you don't have to roll over and die from it. You are a professional writer, and you will overcome.
Sometimes, it's a personal health matter, like a cold or a broken bone or sudden need for surgery. Sometimes, it's a family issue, like school, parents, spouse, death, or birth. Sometimes, it's the Day Job, with an extra project or the busy season or a promotion or downsizing.
As writers, we give ourselves strict deadlines and have high expectations of ourselves. We make sure to keep a schedule for writing, research, self-promotion, editing, advertising, and more. But every so often, we just can't keep that schedule.
Am I the only one who gets frustrated by that? Can I see a show of hands?
******
A Case in Point
This post is a little late going up due to a sinus infection that came at exactly the wrong time. Worse, the sinus infection was my own fault, because I went into an allergy-laden situation knowingly and failed to take adequate precautionary measures. But that's not the big writing "fail" of my current life.
Mostly for fun and partly for extra income, I took on a temporary job in summer stock theater. I looked at my schedule and the rehearsal schedule, evaluated my time, and figured that I could do the show in the afternoons and evenings and write in the late mornings. It would work.
Wrong.
I wound up working 17-20 hours each day for three weeks, which included a one-hour commute each day. Every moment was filled with something: rehearsal, learning choreography, getting from one practice space to another ... oh, and eating and sleeping in brief snatches. I did not know what I was getting myself into, no way, no how.
My writing time was gone. I was so far beyond exhausted when I got home each night (or morning) that I couldn't even think. For the first time in my life, my characters were silent. My fingers were still. And it took me a week to throw in the towel, stubborn mule that I am. I declared a hiatus, the death-knell of serialized work.
I write serial fiction, which means that I update my website three times each week with a new, 1,000-word installment of a long-form novel. I try to have a small buffer of around three updates, but often I write the "page" just before it's due to go up. It's fun and challenging for me, and I really like the format. But here you can readily see one of the downsides: when Life Attacks, I'm left hanging in the wind.
******
What Can We Do?
Allow me to share some insights from my experiences with you.
Allow yourself to fail. We're human. At least once in our lives, things are going to splat on the Windshield of Life. And really, it's OK. We have high expectations of ourselves, and that's good. But too high an expectation leads to perfectionism and ulcers. Take a deep breath, and release it slowly. Repeat. One more time. It will be alright.
Reevaluate your schedule. Be sure to factor in the new time sink, and give yourself some grace. If you need to lighten your load because of a long-term situation, do so. Don't kill yourself trying to keep a workload that no longer matches the 24 hours you have each day. If the distraction was short-term, then get back in the saddle and ride on. Be honest about what you can and can't do going forward.
Plan ahead, but be reasonable. If whatever threw off your writing was preventable, try to determine what you can do better for the next time it may come around. If whatever happened wasn't predictable, don't beat yourself up over it; it wasn't something you could have changed or mitigated. For my summer job, I really had no way of knowing how much time I would lose for two reasons: there were things I didn't know about going into the production, and I'd never done a show this huge before. Next time, however, I'll be prepared and write a huge buffer.
Know when to get help. Communication is key. Let others know what's going on in your life. Don't think that you have to do everything yourself or that you can't appear "weak." That's malarkey and you know it. Personally, I hate delaying my updates by even a minute, so a hiatus gives me serious conniptions. But I had to do it, so I let my readers know and gave them as much information as I could. Email your editors, post to your crit group's board, call your #amwriting buddies. It's OK to admit that something came up.
Don't get discouraged. We creative types are prone to blowing things out of proportion. Don't give me that look; I'm one of you, so I can speak with authority. It is not the end of the world. You missed a deadline. Big deal. It happens to all of us. Maybe it was being two weeks late on something voluntary, and maybe it was missing the last step in a deal-breaking contract. Even if you just watched your entire writing career flush away, it's not the end. You can always pick up the pieces and start over. Deep breaths, friends.
******
Moving Forward
When life throws you a fastball, make lemonade. Or something like that. Not every "catastrophe" is an all-bad thing. Often, we can mine silver from it, such as new insight on how to write grieving characters, or how to add a little more chaos to our plots. Maybe we gain new appreciation for coffee on the porch while watching the sunrise.
Take heart, my friends. Reality bites hards, but you don't have to roll over and die from it. You are a professional writer, and you will overcome.
