All Work And No Play

Maybe you should take a break...

Last week I talked about the importance of putting aside distractions to follow your dreams. After posting the article, however, I had a discussion with one of my friends about the topic and realized that I left something important out. See, it’s important to understand your priorities and to put your work first over distraction. What I left out is that the writer needs to know when to put the digital pen down and take a break.

I have this nagging mentality where I need to feel like I’m working, or I believe I’m lazy. It’s something I’ve struggled with since I was a teenager. I keep thinking back to when I was a kid and didn’t do much housework like picking up my room, and my parents would scold me for it. The same goes for my first job, where my first boss screamed at me many times for apparently slacking on the job. I hated the lectures so I started getting tough on myself. As I’d get older, I’d constantly have to do things around the house or at my job, or I’d tell myself that I didn’t take my tasks seriously enough. This harmful mentality seeped into my work mentality; nothing I’d do would cease these thoughts from haunting me.

When writing came into the picture, I got even tougher on myself. I’d spend nights working on drafts for school, as well as my own personal projects. I’d go out to my writing space, stare at my screen, and try to write. Some nights, the creative juices would flow and I’d be productive. Other nights I’d stare at the screen and wish I had a spell from Harry Potter to make my work magically appear.

I spent months working on my final project, agonizing over every detail of it. I’d write for a page, become dissatisfied with my work, delete it, and start all over. When I wasn’t writing, I was thinking about writing and what to do with my story. Deadlines would come and go, yet I had nothing to show for my effort. Even at work my thoughts would be consumed with the writing I had to do once I got home.

I mentally beat myself up for my lack of progress, calling myself lazy and a failure for not having my story past even the first act. I couldn’t think straight, and I doubted anything I put my hands on. Without knowing it, I had worked myself to a mental exhaustion. There was even a point where the deadlines seeped into my dreams, and I’d have nightmares of my professors demanding to see my work. It absolutely broke me, and I began to think I wasn’t cut out to be a writer. I had reached one of the deepest and darkest points in my career as an author, and I hadn’t even published a single story.

One evening in October 2012 while driving home from my job with my wife, I had an honest heart to heart talk with her. I bore my soul to her, revealing all of the doubt and frustration I had about writing hidden in my head. I told her about how little progress I had made and how I didn’t know if I’d even earn the degree I spent so much money striving towards. She knew I was exhausted mentally and emotionally, and completely had my back.  We decided the best course of action would be for me to take a semester off and take a sabbatical from doing anything creative so I could refocus my mind and restart my creative engine.

That’s exactly what I did. I shut my laptop off, turned the creative switch off in my brain, and allowed myself to be lazy. I did all the things I scolded myself earlier for doing. I watched the TV shows that I had missed, played my neglected video games, and began reading the fictional books I’d been eying for years. I let myself just relax and unwind for those months without any external pressures to accomplish something. It was liberating not having any sort of pressure on myself and giving my mind a chance to just take a break and not be creative. I wouldn’t let myself feel guilty for unwinding and having fun.

See, video games and TV watching are perfectly fine in moderation. We writers and creatives can guilt ourselves for not practicing our craft, but we also need to remember to give our brain a break. Mental fatigue can creep in, and we can completely miss it. Much like our physical muscles, our minds need time to unwind, be entertained, and not focus on that one scene we can’t seem to figure out. Sometimes, the answer for these problems is to get up, walk away, and do something else. When we let our minds rest and recharge, we can come back later and look at our problem and come up with a solution that wouldn’t have occurred to us if we tried working through our fatigue. Now, there are times we have deadlines we can’t avoid, but that’s why it’s essential to purposely schedule break times in to make sure we don’t run into these issues.

After taking my extended break, I jumped right back into my final project in the summer of 2013. By then I was mentally ready to take on my last great school challenge. I began running into the same issue I had before with my story – I couldn’t figure out how to rewrite my outline. But after thinking about it for a bit, I realized my original outline actually worked and only needed minor adjustments; I could change direction when I felt it was necessary. It freed me to get started on my script, and over the next several months I managed to not only initially write it, but to completely rewrite it in less than a week when my professor told me it was too long (but that’s another story…).

I credit my success in this attempt because I chose to look after my mental health and take a long break from my story. I wasn’t able to see this solution until I took the time to relax, recharge, and let myself have fun. Remember writers: you need to take care of your mind, so turn the creative side off from time to time and recharge.

So don’t throw away your TV or all of your video games; play them every once and awhile. You’re allowed to have fun and it’ll do you good. That story isn’t going anywhere while you’re gone, I promise. Once you’ve had your fun, be disciplined to put them aside and get back to your passion. Your writing will benefit from it.

Do you have a workaholic problem like I do? Tell me about it in the comments section and we’ll talk about it. You’re not alone. Keep writing friends, and remember, you can do it.