Autumn is always a difficult season for me to write. I’m not exactly sure why— it is my favorite season. But I do have a few ideas. It could be a combination between the baseball playoffs and political elections that cause such distraction. It could be that the days get shorter and anxiety grows over how to spend your waking hours. Or— and I’m not at all against this possibility— the daemon which occasionally visits my desk checks out for the month of Halloween, and doesn’t bother to come back for the holidays.
Even as long as I’ve been doing this, it still feels like every now and then I have to relearn the lesson of going slowly, writing poorly and being okay with it, that a day spent writing things that aren’t ever going to make the draft is so much better spent than a day banging my head against the wall over an idea until I’m exhausted and drawing sweeping and faulty conclusions about myself— not just the quality of the work— but of my actual self.
Last week, The Scriptnotes podcast had an excellent segment on how to decide whether you need to drill down and keep your back to the wheel, or if you really need to step away from work. Both, as John and Craig explain, can be traps. “Tough Love” can masquerade as self-loathing and punishment. “Self-Care” can masquerade as excuses to never actually work.
Most of the time, most of us are probably pretty good at telling the difference of what we need and when. But if you’re like me, and these autumn leaves bring uncertainty, I found this list of questions to be a wonderful guidepost.
And it sent me back into one of my most productive weeks I’ve had since summer ended.
Thanks, John and Craig.