Becoming a better writer and Homo sapien.
I recently wrote an article called A Writer’s Guide To Unforgettable Villains for John August’s Writer Emergency Pack site.
If you’d like to learn more about ways to craft a strong, well-defined villain, and get a laundry list of great examples, give it a read!
It’s done! That big, terrifying, exhilarating thing you’ve been focusing on is finally complete!
Exhale. Let that knot in your shoulders work itself out. Maybe take a nap if you’ve been losing sleep.
This stage is all about finding physical and emotional equilibrium. You may not feel manic joy at reaching your goal, so don’t force it. There’s no need to start singing, “Is That All There Is?”. It may feel more like settling down, a choppy sea returning to a gentle low tide. If this is where you’re at, appreciate the feeling.
But it may also feel like slamming on the brakes. Your mind and body have been working hard, and when at a loss for where to direct that energy, it can feel like everything is shaking apart. On more than one occasion I’ve reached a deadline or gone through an event that tested my endurance to come out the other side and wind up with my immune system waving the white flag. The post-deadline cold or flu used to be a given.
I wish I could tell you there’s a secret to avoiding that crash. I wish I could impart some bit of sage, been-there-done-that wisdom that will save you grief. All I can say is that paying attention to yourself on your way to the finish line and being mindful of what your body tells you takes patience and practice. It’s worth the effort, because you’ll be better prepared for what follows.
Even if something you did was entirely manifest by your direct effort, you didn’t do it in isolation. This is not a time for some Randian, bootstrappy gloating about your success. People helped you in other ways, like offering mental support, reminding you to eat, or picking up the slack elsewhere while you were laser focused. They deserve your gratitude, and they’ll appreciate being included in however you choose to celebrate.
If others collaborated on what you were working on, they definitely deserve thanks. If their fingerprints are on it, you need to respect and honor that involvement.
Gratitude isn’t just polite, it helps you to acknowledge the scope of what you just did. To see the full picture of the effort it took to complete.
For example, say you made yourself a cup of coffee in the morning. Someone had to stock those beans for you to purchase. Someone had to roast the beans. Someone had to ship those beans from where they were grown. Someone had to pick those beans. If you want to get even more granular, there were some pollinating insects involved, too.
And we haven’t even touched on how your mug came to be.
If your coffee can warrant that much gratitude, whatever you just completed has its own web of responsible parties. Take the time to let them know you see the part they played.
There’s a gap in your to-do list now. It’s a space that doesn’t yet have anything to fill it and you may not feel a sense of clarity or urgency to amend that.
Check Twitter every few minutes. Watch a bad movie. Take another nap. Spend far too long picking out your produce at the grocery store.
Rearrange the icons on your phone. Like, really do it right this time, you know?
The worst thing to do is berate yourself for this lull. That’s like telling someone who just finished a marathon that you can’t believe they want to get a ride home instead of running back.
Don’t do that. Embrace this lethargic fugue state like the hard-won boon that it is.
But sooner or later, you need to snap out of it. There are things to do. Small things. Things that fell through the cracks or weren’t considered important enough to focus on as you set your sights on the goal line.
That haircut you’ve needed for a month. That stack of dishes. Returning phone calls and emails. Sweet Jesus, the laundry.
How long have you been out of salt? Do you even remember? Time to fix that.
The time for tunnel vision is over. Being a person involves lots of little tasks. Maintenance tasks. Smaller parts of a whole. The things you can take care of easily when you’re not consumed by something, body, mind, and soul.
Make a list. Start working down it. Keep doing the small things. Keep putting them on the list. It’s an uphill climb, but you need to build up some momentum.
There’s two variations on this stage, which I’ll be describing as Hamiltonian and Bartletarian.
In the Hamiltonian version, there’s a sense of confusion, trepidation, and uncertainty. What Comes Next isn’t clear, and requires some trial and error.
Bartletarian is all about forward momentum and a clear progression of goals. You may have had an inkling of what was next in line as soon as you achieved your goal, and now you’re ready to tackle it. Like a puma. Or Martin Sheen.
Either way, you know that something new is coming up. Best to get ready for it.
I’ve been in a running dialogue with a friend and fellow writer about articles on the topic of doing what you love. Articles talking about how to stoke your passion, about questioning whether you’re actually doing what you love, and so on. There are a lot of people writing a lot of words about doing what you love and knowing what that is.
And it gets me thinking back to a line from Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated.
“I am doing something I hate for you. This is what it means to be in love.”
Love is not synonymous with joy.
Doing what you love does not mean living in a state of bliss. Neither does it mean constant suffering for your craft. Fetishizing some ideal or imagined state of being gets in the way of The Work and getting The Work done.
You make compromises for love. You prioritize for love. You sacrifice for love. Love is messy and imperfect.
So if you ever doubt if what you’re doing is something you love, look at what you’ve set aside for it. Look at the list of things that you said no to in order to say yes to this.
Love is the repetition of yes.
When my wife and I first brought our baby home, Sprout slept in a pack & play next to our bed. It helped us to respond quickly to her needs, but it created a problem: We needed to be quieter in order to avoid waking her.
After a few nights of hearing the Mission: Impossible theme in my head every time I tried to slip under the covers, the realization hit that there was more to it than stealth. We started looking at the room differently. There was a need to rearrange where things were in order to make it easier to take care of the necessary tasks. It became more important to maintain the order in that space than before. Anything left on the ground could create noise or injury to the person trying not to make noise.
You start to look at your actions differently. Being quiet doesn’t involve tensing up and tip-toeing the way that every cartoon ever would have you believe. You limit how much you move. You tone down how much force you put into actions. You set things down gently instead of tossing (which also helps to maintain the space). Your actions begin to feel lighter.
You even think about your actions differently. It may start as “I have to be quiet while I get into bed, or else this baby is going to hear me, wake up, and never go back to sleep until the next Presidential election, and I will rip all my hair out long before then!” but if you keep that up, you will wake the baby. And you will be annoyed. And it will be harder to focus on getting the baby back to sleep.
But with practice, you can hit that sweet spot where you’re even treading lightly in your mind. “I need to pull the covers back.” “I need to sit down on the bed.” “I need to shift my weight to slide under the covers.” Simple actions, pushing toward the goal, but detached from the prediction of failure. Even your mind is using less effort. Walking softly.
Drop a rock in a stream. The water doesn’t stop, look at the rock, swear under its breath, and evaporate. It flows around. That rock can be seen as an obstruction to the natural flow of the water, or it can be seen as the cause of a new route. Either way, the water keeps flowing. The trick is in learning to see the difference.
If I had my druthers, I would have a writing shed. Some windows, a power outlet for my laptop and some speakers, and a desk wide enough to spread out some notebooks and a coffee mug. A wall for a cork board and dry erase board. Maybe even a second outlet for a space heater.
There have been lots of different ways I’ve defined the ideal writing space. There were a string of coffee shops I thought were ideal back when I was living in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area where I did a lot of work. Sometimes a library would be my ideal spot to sit and attack the keyboard. I’ve even made efforts to make whatever desk space I have where I live meet some kind of ideal conception of what it is that I want to make it feel like The Happiest, Most Productive Writing Space On The Planet.
But there’s only so much you can really control. For me, the days of having wide open hours for work are gone (at least for a while). It’s an any port in a storm mentality, where the dining table is as good as a desk, or the phone needs to be as good as a laptop. Five minutes by itself needs to be as useful as five minutes in a full hour of work.
While listening to a podcast on the Four Noble Truths, the speaker mentioned how there is a lot of discussion from the Buddha on the cause of suffering, but the speaker is often asked why Buddha didn’t also explain the cause of happiness. He responds:
When there is a cause, your happiness… is dependent on the cause being there. […] and to feel relaxed and at home, it’s best for there not to be a condition that’s required. Because then you’re able to bring your happiness, your peace into any situation. It’s portable.
-Gil Fronsdal
It reminded me of this quote which puts it another way:
Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose.
-C.S. Lewis
It’s not always possible or helpful to remove all conditions when you’re undertaking a task like writing. For example, writing without a writing implement. However, the principle is the same: attach your writing space and your process to as few conditions as possible. Be fluid. If you need an anchor, find one that’s easily portable, like music.
I’ve always worked while listening to music. It’s a way to create a writing space anywhere you have access to headphones. And if you make music as portable as possible (no streams, so lack of internet doesn’t interfere), it’s something always available to you.
Maybe it’s a certain song or album that puts you in the headspace for a project. A well-curated playlist that, or a shuffled selection of familiar favorites. The music can be that small luxury that helps keep your focus off the larger, frequently unnecessary desires that may feel important to your workspace or Your Process.
What is truly essential to you getting the work done? What are the things that you tell yourself are necessary, and how many of them can you go without? There is value in ritual, and to actions that create a transition from non-work to work time, but ask yourself: What’s the most portable version?
This Builds Character