Why Wellbeing comes at top before Writing
The past two years of pain have not been so kind to me.
As I switched over to a year on working on our start-up business, I had little access to my well-being services. As a result, I got swamped by a lot of stress and anxiety. By the time I left the there, the pandemic had begun. So I ended up living with my parents and everything I’ve been working on had to be placed on hold.
I ended up playing Animal Crossing New Horizons for a few months and learn on some new anxiety easing techniques, including yoga and meditation. But when I was about to edit my first novel from National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I ended up procrastinating so much that I only spent far little across all of my projects. I even planned to start my new business of creating a book app, but that was quickly forgotten doing the whole pandemic.
That lead me to knowing that anxiety is by far one of the greatest challenges of my life.
Imagine spending every day worrying about the future and having to deal with everything at present, in order to go through all the stress in life. There were a lot more restrictions on my life from the past year, causing me to stay at home as much as I possibly can; yet I still deal with many degrees of pressure, especially from my family. Not only that, I dealt with a lot of terrible news shared online, especially with a disturbing amount of transphobic content across twitter. All of that made it so hard for me to live, enough to push myself for counselling, meditation and playing a fountain of time on video games.
This year, though, things got better. I moved over to my new flat, I took more walks outside, and more importantly, I spent more time on my writing. However, I still have problems with my procrastination, anxiety and depression, which still affects my work. Hence, my well-being still needed more work to iron out, as receiving a lot of stress can impact on my creativity at work.
Well-being is important to all humans.
While I was working on my entrepreneurship degree, I discovered a lot of articles to suggest why well-being is so important. They stated the values of certain activities such as events, afternoon tea breaks for chats and accessibility to well-being services. I often had to learn things the hard way in my start-up, as we had to work constantly without any sort of breaks or any opportunities to work at home instead of at an office. Because of that, it didn’t really help with my concentration, and I ended with even more procrastination.
A more simple lesson to learn from all of this is that burnout exists.
I have been burnt out so many times doing a start-up project, that I even hesitated to do work and ended up browsing around for more research and advice for a huge chunk of the day. It can be is absolutely soul destroying. Though one of the solutions that can combat such burnout is by allowing a degree of company culture and more time for discussions, in order to ease other people’s worries.
Now you’re probably thinking why it’s got to do with writing?
For the start, writing is an activity that, like any other creative art, would take a lot of effort to take that first step. For me, I broke that ice when I entered my first NaNoWriMo in 2018 and wrote my first drafts for two of my books across two years. It was an incredibly gruelling process, but I ended up building myself with more experience of writing. It quickly became one of my top hobbies.
One trouble with that is that writing 1600 words a day can burn you out.
Many authors would comfortably write between 200 to 1000 words a day. Stephen King, who wrote a lot of books, would typically write about 2000 words a day. But even bydoing that yourself, it can be a very taxing process that would take a lot of time and commitment ahead of creativity. (But if you’re up to that challenge of even writing 10,000 a day, you’re welcome to do that)
While writing is a fun activity, you can still get burnt out, impacting on how you can spend your time wisely. I’ve been working on my first novel since the 2019 NaNoWriMo, and I have been trying my darn best to contribute to it every single day. But there have been times when life arrows struck in my way, forcing me to take these matters into my own hands.
Even if I managed to sit down and place my finger on my keyboard, I ended up checking constantly on the Internet and checked for many updates. That would waste a lot of hours, causing my daily writing ritual to be left to the last minute of the day. That unfortunately still happens to me as of writing, especially when I have deactivated my Facebook and Twitter accounts for various reasons.
My wholesome advice to you is when you feel burnt out, please allow yourself to take plenty of rest and enjoy games, TV shows, books and everything you can think of that your heart desires.
But you would still need to spend about 10 or 15 minutes a day writing in at least a few hundred words for your novel. The Bestseller Experiment, also a fantastic podcast, is a brilliant place for writing tips, one of which involves in writing 200 words a day. The whole purpose of that challenge is about building the habit of writing within a short time frame, which would suit people with their very busy lives. Although I must confess that I do not have a busy life and the fact that I’ve been battling my stress and anxiety for an extended period of time. That tip, however, ended up becoming a very useful tactic to keep writing daily into my muscle memory.
When Relaxing turns into Hesitation
Relaxation is like having fast food for the soul; when you have too much of it, you may get unfit. This can happen when we spend every day without saving a wee bit of time to do your writing.
The 200 words a day is incredibly useful; when you don’t do that every day, you may lose a habit of doing say. As I went through many counselling sessions to talk about cognitive behavioural therapy, one of the techniques discussed during one of them involves doing the same activity every day (as in routine), and eventually doing the habit so it doesn’t get scary every time.
But then again, sometimes you don’t feel up to it and writing can suck a lot more joy from your day. One of those times, you may have to rest in order to ease your stresses away. But dwell on that for too long, and you won’t get much done where it’s needed. If you are a writer and if you relax too much, you won’t be able to complete your projects and keep the books inside your head for a very long time.
We don’t have a lot of time in our lives. The longer we live, the more we get older, and the more we realise it’s all too late to get the books off our chests.
All the above proves that easing yourself from burnout is more of a balance than you might think. There are times where you must work for various reasons, as well as relaxing on some parts of your life to ease your stresses. You need to allow some time to get your writing done one way or the other, but never forget to allow more for relaxation before you go to bed. A simple routine that can be easier said than done.
It is never easy to write, work and play. But by balancing between all these areas and avoiding burning yourself to death, you can eventually hop over your challenges and accomplish effectively on your re-occurring goals for the rest of your life.
Stress and Anxiety are definitely the biggest challenges of your life.
Do not ignore your mental health. It is incredibly important to treat it instead of having to bottle it up. Let it be the reason to harness your experiences and get inspiration for your own writing journey, but also remember to walk along with it. Talk with it, massage it and counsel with it. The ideal ways to combat your own stress and anxiety include talking to your friends, taking walking trips outside and doing a lot of pastimes to benefit your soul.
According to the book by Timothy Ferriss, walking outside is one of the most rewarding aspects to boost your productivity, for it enables you to explore life and learn from your surroundings. You can also listen to other people’s conversations and think up of new ways to deal with the trouble ahead. Not only they will help to exercise your mind, but it also helps you to focus on your writing. It’s not always easy to do that, as sometimes you usually have to get dressed and go outside in the thick of the morning, leaving you with a lot of time in your afternoon to do your writing.
You don’t have to do walks though, you can still get some experience by watching movies and TV shows, reading books and playing video games. You can even engage in some creative activities that help with your skills. For me, I often do sewing, Minecraft and baking to help foster my own creativity.
On a more important note, always talk with your friends and family about your troubles and make sure they listen to you. It never helps when they don’t understand about are your issues, so it’s always best to talk to the right people who would definitely understand what you’re experiencing.
Working on your wellbeing can be an incredibly taxing experience to deal with. But if you prioritise your care and work effectively, then you will end up with more time for your writing and hopefully produce up to a thousand words a day.
I have been dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety throughout my entire life, and it’s always hard for me to write every day. But the more I write more words for my books and get them published, the more I can celebrate my life in ways that no one else would even get to these extents.