Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Writing Through The Blur

Life is tricky when you're a writer for your living. You don't get to just wait until you're hit by the muse. Sometimes you are sad and have to write with joy. Sometimes you're joyful and get to write about a horrible or depressing topic. Sometimes you are exhausted but you have to write through the blur to hit your deadline.

Last night my eyes were so heavy and I was seeing a blurry double screen in front of me but I had to finish. I had already had a one day extension and couldn't let my client down. It was torture but I got the job done. I'm tempted to look back at the last two or three articles today to make sure they're coherent. I'm getting good at being a functional sleepwalker.

I had to write during a rough time in my personal life a while back and it was hard to turn off my emotions. Writers tend to be emotional people, or at least emotional on paper and at times it was therapeutic to get lost in a page about something other than my emotions while at other times it was hard to turn things off so I could focus on my work.

If you want to get more clients, earn more money and make strides in this industry, you have to learn to write through the blur. Journaling about negative emotion can do wonders for getting it all out and when it comes to exhaustion, you have to learn to use your down time wisely and get enough sleep as much as you can.

What do you find helps you soldier on when you're exhausted or sidetracked?

2 comments:

alternatefish said...

I ask myself: "if you don't do it now, when are you going to do it?"

I usually don't have a good answer to that question, and I can make myself power through.

sometimes I have to resort to a half pint of ben & jerry's, though.

Anonymous said...

I've found that just putting something on the computer screen (even if its incoherent at first) does wonders to overcome those overwhelming emotions that cause writer's block. I blogged about this same topic on 7/20 after being asked to write an article on selflessness and feeling anything but that. In the end, the writing did wonders to help me overcome my problems that week. Who needs a psychiatrist when you're a writer?!?