How many times have you found yourself hunched over your desk, eyes barely open, brain so overloaded from all the things you, ‘have to come up with’ to please some editor you don’t even like writing for, for a paycheck that really wasn’t worth all the time, effort, creativity, and burnt brain cells it took to write it?
As a full-time independent writer, I’ve experienced this on way too many occasions. I know what it’s like to get so stuck in a financial rut that you’re doing everything you can to get those jobs that pay something, but, then you find yourself weeks or moths or—God forbid—years down the road without any real literary work to take pride in; bitter that you have wasted so much of your creative talent; and stuck with what feels like an imagination-drought.
Although it seems impossible to recover after one of these ‘dessert’ moments—and many writers give up on their writing dreams altogether—it is possible to not only revive yourself, but thrive again as a writer. Let me throw you a few literary life-preservers.
10 Life-Saving Rules that saved my literary (possibly mental and physical) life:
- Find something every day that makes you laugh a good belly laugh.
- Make a point to read daily for pleasure—not work
- Write something for yourself once a week
- Organize your day so that it includes breaks, a walk, and real food.
- Stop when you’re body tells you it needs to stop
- Make sleep a priority
- Discover a routine that works for you and keep it.
- Work diligently towards Someday without sacrificing your relationships Today.
- Make time for a hobby
- When it’s time to write, Write!
Be proud that you’re a writer, but don’t make the mistake that some many others have made by getting so overloaded with ‘projects’ and ‘stuff’ that they stop loving life and miss out on everything that is meaningful in the world around them.
Someday is coming, I promise. You will get there. But remember that Someday will be a product of what we do and how we live our lives Today. Like the old saying goes: Practice Makes Perfect. Be careful then what it is that your perfecting, heed what you’re practicing.
Cheers to you!
Sam
AShotOfLiteraryCaffeine 