As an author who has been struggling this year to write due to life chaos, I think I have found (re-found?) the key to unstuck myself. This panacea is two-fold, and a good chunk of you are absolutely going to hate the answer I’m about to give. The key to getting unstuck is time and doing something else.

Please take a moment to unclench your jaw and relax your shoulders. If you are shrimping, stop that and fix your spin.

Yes, I, too, was mortified to realize that the best way to get unstuck was literally to do nothing, put the writing project aside, and do something else for a bit.

During the first few weeks of feeling burnt out, I tried to rest. I was still taking Katie to and from her vet appointments for radiation (she’s doing great btw), so rest wasn’t exactly restful. I did that for probably two more weeks after her treatments finished. I just did nothing when I could. My time was spent letting my mind and body decompress because I could still feel myself instantly shoot into fight or flight mode any time anything stressful happened. That ended up being the litmus test I used to decide if I was okay going back to doing anything productive beyond the necessities. Playing farming/dating style video games became a way for me to decompress. They require brain power but no real emotional stress. I also watched a bunch of Deadliest Catch along with old shows that I have seen repeatedly. The familiarity and repetition were soothing. Books also helped. I read a lot while Katie was getting her treatments, and I read quite a bit. At the same time, there were weeks where I struggled to read because the words kept bouncing off my brain. If you can’t read or can only do audiobooks, don’t be surprised. My partner also helped out more during this time when it came to things like dinner and other tasks that could be taken off my plate. It helped a lot.

When I no longer felt like my brain was going to shoot straight into the sky is falling mode any time something minor happened, I moved onto rereading my story and taking some notes as to what I wanted to change with it. Writing came in fits and starts. Part of me really wanted to hit the ground running and just write. I had promised my readers this short story, and god damn it, I was going to deliver. Yeah, bad idea. Beating yourself will only set you back and start inching you back to fight or flight. I gave myself the goal of working on the story. If I opened the document and toodled with it at all, it counted as working. Some days I added a couple hundred words. Other days I added twenty. I could feel the capitalist productivity mindset breathing down my neck, but I resisted its siren song. I went through burn out in 2018 and never want to repeat it again. Trying to be creatively productive while fried is a recipe for not writing for a whole year or overworking a project to death, scrapping it, and starting over. You might think you’re wasting time now, but I’d rather waste a month now toodling than a year beating my head against the wall and feeling bad about myself for doing it.

Something that also really helped was playing around with other creative outlets. I worked on some plastic canvas village pieces, which have patterns pre-planned for you and are repetitive. The mindful yet mindlessness behind them helps the brain cool down. I often think about how many injured soldiers after WWI went through rehabilitation where they did crafts, like do embroidery or sew fancy wallets. Crafts and the arts have been used for centuries, and they are a good place to start if you’re feeling overwrought. The problem with drawing and painting is that it often requires you to keep thinking the way writing does. The planning aspect requires more executive function than we have, so my solution is to air on the side having premade instructions or patterns. I can follow a pattern and reproduce something, even when fried. It takes the guesswork and higher thought out of it.

After getting back into the swing of writing, I am very glad that I listened to my body and brain and slowed down as much as I could. The Victorians and Edwardians got a lot wrong, but sending overwrought people to the seaside for three months to decompress recover was an idea we should have kept around. I’m probably 80% of the way back to normal and still guarded with my brain and energy levels, but I feel so much better than I did in April and May. My writing is going far more smoothly, and I’m actually excited to work on creative projects. My partner and I have actually been brainstorming something we can collaborate on, and that has been fueling my creativity in my writing as well. People talk a lot about refilling your well to help you write, and it is very true. You need to take care of your brain and body and listen when the internal check engine light comes on. Sometimes, it is impossible to slow down completely but cutting back where you can and off-loading some responsibilities to others temporarily can make a world of difference in how fast you recover.