Seems to be the season for it - writing and brain chemistry issues

[aldersprig]

  So, completely ignoring for the moment the argument that you should "write every day, write no matter what," because I find that advice  to be good only if your goal is simply to put words on paper...

What happens when your brain chemistry won't let you write?

(The writer in my attic just posted a blog about this too; it's going around.)

I have, over the past years - I think since 2008 is a good marker - gotten relatively good at having an "off" day and moving on the next day.  It's part of why I don't believe/follow the "write every day" advice, because sometimes it's just not a writing day. 

Sometimes you want to go out and play outside, for instance.  

And some days the brainweasels are just too much and you stare at the screen, totally unmotivated, and, if you're me, end up curling up and watching TV mindlessly until you sleep. 

Normally, if I have a bad month, I have a bad month, and I pick up again the next month.  Writing is still a part-time thing for me, after all; it's not the thing paying the bills yet. So I can afford to slack off. 

This month....  This month I'm doing Camp Nano, and so I have an external accountability I don't normally have (At least not since I stopped writing Addergoole episodes the day before I posted them).  And I don't have the oomph.  Or, rather, there have been a lot of days of not having the oomph.

I'm not sure, yet, what to do about it.  Write when I can, I suppose, and write as well and as much as I can when it's there. 

Do you have tricks for getting yourself around the bad-brain-chemistry times?  

 Or tricks for getting yourself back on the horse, as it were?

 

Comments

[meridian_rose]

Wait it out. Rant about it. Do other things. Wait for that inspirational moment that gets me going again. Force myself to write (eg for a landcomm) - it won't be good but it's words. But usually if life (generally but especially emotionally) sucks and I can write, that's something. If writing sucks but life is okay, I still feel bad. If writing sucks and real life sucks it's bloody awful.
But it always passes, even when I think it never will.
*hugs*

[natf]

I knit. But, then, I knit all the time to the extent that I almost never write any more. Heh.