Writer Care and Feeding

The writing life is fraught with many stresses, all of which can erode focus, create depression and divert us from our goals. There are many unanswered questions - not just in our work, but in our lives.

Am I going to be able to do this for a living? Could I make enough to quit my day job? Should I quit my day job? Can I afford to take creative chances? Is this really what I want to do with my life?

These questions leap out in the face of our many daily challenges. It's tough to get started on those five daily story pages. It's hard to turn those rejected stories around and get them in the mail again. Another market search, another magazine that only pays copies, another rejection, and another, another, another ...

I think I may have mentioned in a recent article that it's a wonder any of us keep at it, given the success rate. Compared to other careers, it's positively ludicrous how much rejection we have to put up with before we're finally published.

This life requires perserverance, bravery, and faith. All those of those characteristics expend energy, be it physical, mental, or spiritual. It's the cost of keeping the dream alive long enough to see it become reality.

Put simply: the writing life is a marathon, and you need to be in the best shape of your life to run it.

This runs contrary to the hard-living, hard-drinking, hard-edged lifestyle of the artistic archtype. In my youth, I embraced that ideal and lived as close to it as possible.

I'm speaking from experience here. That archtype is old news. It's outmoded. It needs to go away.

I struggled with alcoholism, depression, and low self-esteem when I was younger. Now, twenty-one years sober and happier every day, I can say unequivocally that healthier is better. I'm more productive, more focused, and recover from setbacks more quickly.

My whole mindset is different. I used to think of my brain and body as completely separate things (the kind of logic that can only be processed by college undergraduates with philosophy minors). I fed my mind continuosly, but didn't really care what happened to my body. I came to my senses, but not until I had graduated. Sometimes you learn the important lessons when you're not in school any more.

That path I'm on now has taken me out of every comfort zone I could have imagined, and a few I couldn't. I went from a steady, stable job and income to a very slim retirement income, no steady paycheck and an earning potential based largely on what I think (maybe assume is a better word) I can earn doing what I love.

I've said before that writers are adept at pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, but this is more like leaping barefoot, believing you have boots on, and hoping that the straps will materialize when you need to grab them.

So far, it's worked like a charm - in large part due to the fact that I believe it will work. I believe in what I know, and I believe in my ability to share it with others in a meangingful way.

I support and maintain those beliefs with good care and feeding.

You've heard it a million times before. But I'm going to restate it here so you see it in the context of everything else on this site. I've ignored information repeatedly in the past until seeing it in a particular context.

So here's the context:

Exercise. The current wisdom is twenty-minute sessions, three times a week, with enough exertion to raise your heart rate to a specific level dependent on your age and body weight. I'm a bit obssessive about my workouts these days, but I used to be a real slug. My energy levels were low; even my imagination seemed depleted. I was working on a series of connected, themed short stories, and the writing wasn't going well. Whatever connections I had felt seemed to dissolve in the writing.

I started taking walks. At first, they were just to get some fresh air, take a break, and rethink things. But the physical exertion actually seemed to clear my mind. The walks became jogs, the jogs became runs, and the runs became bike rides followed by regular trips to the gym.

I started out hating exercise as much as the next guy, so I wouldn't recommend this if it didn't have practical application in the writer's working life. A lot of us are pretty sedentary. Exercise stimulates greater oxygen flow to the blood and tissues, including the brain. Your concentration, focus and alertness - and therefore your writing - will improve with regular exercise. If you've been out of the gym for a long time (or have never been in one), start by taking walks. It may not seem like much, but it's a great non-intimidating way to start.

Food. I love junk food, and unlike alcohol, I've never found a way to completely give it up. My favorite thing in the world is to make up some excuse to run errands at lunchtime so I can go to my local fast foodery and chow down on some deep-fried chicken strips, gravy, and french fries. The gravy is just one pinch of seasoning shy of pure lard, and the fries are still hot and dripping with fresh grease when you get them.

I have a nice, refreshing 32-ounce cup of caffeinated soda with the meal, of course. I love soda. It's fizzy. And sweet. And the caffeine is really wonderful for that mid-afternoon slump.

I used to eat like that all the time, with results very similar to what I experienced when I didn't exercise. As I gradually changed the way I ate, I started to notice a big difference in my energy level, which meant I wrote more and with improved concentration.

While I support the belief that completely depriving myself of foods I love will eventually cause me to binge on the them until I sink into a hypo-glycemic and cholesterol-induced coma, it is also clear that I cannot eat like that every day. Or even every week. So I try to keep healthy foods in the house, and plan my errands for later in the afternoon to avoid that temptation.

We all have a Bear in our lives - a thing that tempts and torments us. Sometimes, you get the Bear. Sometimes, the Bear gets you.

Soda is my Bear. I know it's bad for me, but I love it, which makes it difficult to give it up. I struggled for eight years with alcohol, but I've been battling the caffeine and sugar Bear for three times that long. I have cut back significantly, and I drink at least 72 ounces of water every day. It's not perfect, but it's progress. That's all any of us can strive for.

Mind and Spirit. Happiness is not something we gain through manipulating outside circumstances. We say things like, "when I finally get that interview published, I'll be happy," or "when I can finally earn a living with my writing, I'll be happy." It's a very typical, goal-oriented, Western thought process.

There's only one problem: it doesn't work.

Two of my most important life goals have always been to publish my writing and be financially secure. In one year, I had six short stories professionally published. I was working on a novel I was confident I could sell. I had momentum. Things were moving forward. I remember sitting in my living room one night with this sense of unreality washing over me. It was what I had always wanted - the dream. It was happening. But in the middle of all that, I didn't feel happier because of it.

That same year, my wife landed a job that paid almost twice as much as I was earning. I had more disposable income than I knew what to do with. For about three months, it was great. I could buy anything I wanted.

Then I got bored.

I had achieved both goals - in significantly greater measure than I have now - but they did not make me happy.

Happiness doesn't come from outside sources. It comes from within you. For writers, I think a lot of it comes from doing good work, and knowing you are doing good work. Even publishing the work is not as significant as the simple, life-affirming act of finding your truth and getting it on paper.

Take care of your mind and spirit by reaching for happiness within you. There is so much to be happy about. So much to be grateful for. You are a thinking, reasoning being with a unique perspective that you can share with others. That in itself is a tremendous gift, well worth celebrating. It is so precious. Start your day with a gratitude prayer or meditation. Even if you're reading this on a library computer because you live in a homeless shelter. You have things to be grateful for. Give thanks for the library and the shelter. It's a beginning. Wherever you are, you can grow.

Attend to your own care and feeding this week. See what positive changes you can make. If you go outside and take a ten-minute walk tonight, that's improvement. If you put the bag of cookies back in the cupboard before it's empty, that's improvement. If you say to yourself, "happiness is a choice, and I choose to be happy," that's improvement - even if you don't believe it yet. Say it three times a day for the next month and you'll own it for life.

If any or all of those things lead to one more good sentence, one more good paragraph, one more good page, it will have been worth all your effort.

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