Your Month of Rest and Relaxation
what to do now that you're done (or not)
Hi friends,
I hope you had a wonderful holiday, if you got one. If you did NaNoWriMo, I hope you hit your goal! (If you didn’t, this is for you, too). Maybe your goal was just to start. Maybe your goal was to get to 25k words. Either way, let’s talk today about how to recover from a Big Project.
Resting is hard. I know that everything else tells you to hustle hustle hustle but if you don’t rest regularly, you’ll burn out and your productivity will grind to a halt. December is a wonderful time to take a little break—you may have to travel or people visiting you soon, you might have a few days off work (which tends to compress your remaining workdays instead of being a relief), and maybe your social calendar gets a little fuller this time of year. Maybe your industry, like mine, slows waaaaaaaaaay down and no one’s really doing any new business. (Unless you work retail, and if so I wish you comfortable shoes, overtime, and kind customers.)
Not doing things is…. strange to me. I don’t know how to not do things. Sit? Relax? What’s that? What do I do with my hands? If you’re like me, you need some guidance on how NOT to do stuff. (Yes, I’m going to read this book. Over the holidays.)
Don’t touch your book.
If you just finished NaNo, or another big kind of project, give it a rest. Don’t mess with it. Don’t just check to see how it’s doing. You need to forget what you wrote to be able to edit effectively, I feel. Try to give it the whole month, but two weeks will do if you’re anxious/under deadline/can’t help yourself. You need to give your brain a rest w/r/t this particular set of things, too. Give it some space to make connections you might not have been able to before, in the thick of it.
Don’t keep writing your book. Write something for fun.
Fanfiction! A script! A poem! A genre totally different from your own! If you feel like you have to write, do something low or no pressure, something no one will read, something just for fun. Why not? HAVE FUN. It will remind you that writing can be fun (I promise some people feel this way) after the painful slog that is any big project.
Don’t read your book. Read some other books.
Fanfiction! A script! A poem! A genre totally different from your own! Pick up any Best Of list published in the last 14 days and get the book you’ve been meaning to read. Do NOTHING that feels like an obligation (I command you to not make it an obligation lol). Give yourself some freedom to enjoy reading, because if you enjoy writing, I hope to blog you like reading, too.
Literally do anything else. Or not.
The whole point here is to get you to step away from your work for a while, to give your brain a break, to give your work a break so you can come back to it with fresh eyes and edit with impunity. I bet you’re not good at taking breaks, and really, you just need to take some breaks sometime and this is probably a good time to do it. Go for a walk outside. Get some air in your lungs. Do the opposite of what your tired, stressed out, hustling brain tells you to do, even if that’s sitting quietly on a bench. Sometimes brains are dumb.
Don’t be so hard on yourself.
If you didn’t finish your draft (helllloo! I still haven’t finished editing mine!!!) or hit whatever goal you set for yourself, that’s ok. I mean, it sucks and it feels horrible, but it doesn’t mean anything more than you didn’t hit whatever goal you or a website set for you. It dosen’t mean you’re worthless or a bad writer or undisciplined or never going to finish a novel or publish anything or whatever our dumb brains would make us believe. It is just a thing, a fact about this moment, and there will be other facts and other moments, so get on to those. Cut yourself some slack. Do/buy/eat/read/watch/sing/play the thing you like, and try again later. After a break. Because ever if you didn’t hit THE goal, you probably at least did something, and something is always, always, always better than nothing.
That’s my pep talk for today. On Thursday, for subscribers, I’m SUPER SUPER SUPER excited to share an interview with an Agents and Books reader who got a book deal and said this newsletter helped them get there!!!!! I know!!!!! It’s amazing!! The system works!!!!
XOXOX,
Kate