Writer Self Care

This month’s meeting was great. After the business portion concluded several of us stayed on to socialize. Our collective tiredness came up several times; prompting me to write a post about a topic I’ve meant to cover for a while now. I call it writer self-care. Pam has written an article about all the hats that a writer must wear. Hopefully, she can share some or all of it with us soon. It’s not a laundry list of why you’re burnt out, but an eye-opening look at all the stuff we do. That’s part one of being an Indie—being willing to ‘do it yourself’ when you may have no experience and no idea what you stepped into. One of the big reasons NIWA leadership past and present took the time to get our feet under us and birth a sort of NIWA 2.0 is that we needed to spread it all around more effectively or we were going to burn out. NIWA events are awesome and we’re making headway at changing people’s minds about Indie publishing, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Let me cover just one more angle about avoiding burn out. If you ask most people to close their eyes and think of a writer they probably don’t think of someone joyously tapping away out a keyboard with sunlight streaming through a large window beyond which children and pets romp with quiet abandon. No. Their vision is probably closer to a prematurely-aged person wearing rumpled clothes, chain smoking while they pace a one room loft over a martial arts studio, muttering to themselves, “downstairs their always kicking and screaming.” When I was six, my parents asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. They said I could pick anything I wanted, they would be proud of me even if I was a garbage man. I said, “I want to be a writer.” As I recall with vivid detail, they said, “…but you could be a garbage man or anything. Just pick something you can make money at.” Well, that was my first introduction to “reality.” As years went by, I collected more impressions of writers. “You’ll only be famous after you die.” “You have a better chance of winning the lottery than becoming a writer. That’s even if you don’t buy a ticket.” That little gem was from a teacher who first diagnosed my dyslexia. My favorite was, “writers are second only to dentist for suicide…they’re also big drinkers. Do you have a drinking problem? Because writers are drunks.” That one was said to me in an interview. I didn’t get the job. So…I’m starting this thread hoping to leverage the creativity of the NIWA community to compile ideas for writer’s self-care. What good is it if NIWA erases the stigma of Indie publishing as vanity press, if the reputation of a “real” writer is a destitute, suicidal drunk? So what are your favorite ways to fight off funk, control the creative chaos, obliterate obligations, crowd out criticism, etc. I’ll start out by saying, I’m a huge believer in vitamin D (consult a physician blah blah) and walking. Also lots of water. At least those are my basic first steps to keeping a good attitude. Toward organizing my chaos, I currently favor “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. I strongly recommend that book. I personally don’t write at home, though I have an office type space. I prefer a coffee shop, because I like to leave the house every day. I’m trying to teach myself to write in bursts of 20 minutes and then get up and walk around. I’ll let you know if I get that worked out. LOL. Okay, so what are your ideas? It could be anything that makes your life as a writer better, richer, or less stressful. Let’s make writing one of the happiest, healthiest, most well-balanced professions. Check out the book "On Becoming a Man" while its free on Kindle this week.