<Overwhelmed Scream>

Ok now that I got that out of my system

Friends!

I went to France! I went to the Festival de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême (that means comics and graphic novel fest) with my wonderful client Trungles (thank you Ankama!) and it was AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING. I met fantastic people. I bought books in a language I can barely read. I got to go to a new-to-me city AND walk around Paris and shop at my favorite Paris store, Monoprix, or as I call it French Target. I ate a large quantity of superior bread and interesting flavors of potato chips (Yakitori! Sauce de frites!)

Before I left, though, I was stressed out. My kid and I were sick for like two weeks (just a cold, but a bitch of a cold). It was post-holidays and I’d taken time off for that but guess what? Work doesn’t actually stop over the holidays nor do magical elves come in and read my manuscripts for me while I’m on vacation. So I was behind. And feeling unwell. And prepping for an international trip. And making sure stuff was going to be ok on the homefront while I was gone. And and and and and.

Needless to say I am kinda freaking out right now! My to do list is bonkers. I want to address like 10 client issues immediately and simultaneously and would like to alter the space time continuum to be able to do so, please. I need to clean the house and grocery shop and convince my kid that the afterschool karate class they finally go into will actually be fun. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Complaining about being busy is not that interesting, sorry. It is also not necessarily about writing and publishing. EXCEPT for this list I’m about to share with you about how I am going to tackle this overwhelm to actually make a dent in the to do list today/this week¹.

1. Make a big messy to do list: this is just a list of all the shit I need to do in no particular order, just on a scrap of paper, not even in my specific work notebook. (You can do this in any modality that works for you—typed up, voice memo, whiteboard. Whatever.)

   As a writer, this means you make a list of all the stuff you need to do: research agents, outline WIP, copyedit, write that blurb. Whatever it is, big or small. Get it down so you can see it all in one place.

2. Pull out the time sensitive stuff and the stuff to do with money: these are the most pressing things in my biz—meetings, deadlines, deals, etc and anything that has to do with getting my clients paid without delay. I’m going to do these things first and ASAP.

   As a writer, this means you…pull out all the time sensitive stuff and do that first, lol. If you’re not on a deadline, do the stuff that you have to do before you can do the next step, like research the agents or write your query. (Obvs you can’t send something out before you do that stuff.)

3. Take an actual lunch break and leave the house today: I need to eat and I need to not sit at my desk for the next 8 hours straight. I’m going to go down to our local coffee shop and get the freshly ground coffee I like because we’re out and that will function as 1. doing a necessary errand and 2. leaving the house. This applies to all of us no matter what our primary jobs are. Don’t forget you are a person and not just a work-machine.

4. Answer email: Archive, file, answer, triage, whatever it takes to get stuff out of my inbox. I am working hard to remember that email is not my PRIMARY job but also people need answers via email. I’m trying to balance it out.

   As a writer, you might (or might not!) have this level of annoying admin tasks but whatever your email-level, get that shit out of the way.

5. Do part of a bigger thing that won’t all get done today: A mistake I make when I’m overwhelmed is focus solely on the tasks I can accomplish right now and check off the list instead of the bigger things (reading, editing, planning, etc) that still need to be done, but won’t get done in one sitting. I could fill my whole day with little things I can check off a list, but that only gets that stuff done and the big stuff gets neglected and then I get farther behind and then that stresses me out and then I get overwhelmed again and the cycle continues. DISLIKE. So I have to remember to do part of a bigger thing among all the little things.

   As a writer, that may mean you spend an hour (or several) reading or researching or writing a messy draft you will almost certainly delete, even if that doesn’t feel like real, measurable work. It still counts! It all adds up!

6. Make peace with the fact that I will not get “caught up” today: If I could do several weeks worth of work in one day then I would be MUCH less stressed out all the time. In my job, there’s basically no getting “caught up” ever. There is always something else to read, consider, send, do. So I am trying to get rid of this yearning to get “caught up” and replace it with stepping back and recognizing all the stuff I actually did in a day. Because I do a lot! And that counts even if I didn’t do it ALL.

   As a writer, acknowledge that you’re not going to read/edit/write all the things in one day. It’s ok. Chip away at it. It all counts for you, too.

I’m off to tackle my big messy list! Excited to cross off write my newsletter.

XOXOXOXOXOX,

Kate

1. This stuff might be obvious to you! But also, sometimes when we’re flailing we just need someone to point us in the right direction or push us to get started anywhere we can.