I have a revision due on Monday. I have not even considered starting. It isn’t like I’m taking a break. It is more like I move slowly between fiction these days, a sure sign that I ought to take a break and recharge. I ask myself almost daily, what would a recharge entail? Now there is a chapter for a book on writing. Recharging yourself is important–especially in the later years of life when the brain does feel like it takes a lot more to get going. I’m past that 50 year hillock and realizing that my brain has been slow for the past ten or more. Now is that age, or is it about not being fully committed to the content? Or is it the other thing–fearing that I am not creating anything sharply original and fearing that AI is going to catch up and surpass me as a writer?
Sounds like charging up and fear of the future are two things wrapped up together. As I try to unravel this tangled mess I have to think about what wears me down. First it is the coming up with finely woven sentences. I used to be able to craft them quickly, but lately a smooth turn of phrase takes longer to leap to my mind, so I end up writing more bad sentences and having to spend more time in revision. That is about confidence more than it is about fear (though those are also tied up). A second knot in that tangle is this inability on stay on task as long. That has everything to do with stress and distraction. Whereas writing used to be about de-stressing, lately it has been the cause of a chunk of my stress.
So, we have stress, fear, fatigue, distractions, and reduced mental fortitude. All of these things are cause for recharge, but I still have yet to understand what recharge actually means or does. I suspect that part of it is to listen to and read on paper good writing.
Some Thoughts:
- Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “A man lost his wallet at a Dallas World Cup game. Argentina fans cleverly crowdsourced it back to him” The best part is these guys chanting the dude’s name in order to find him in the crowd and get him his wallet. I mean, wow. I love what the World Cup atmosphere can do to people.