Sometimes you can’t. Don’t punish yourself, or beat yourself over the head if you are too tired, too overwhelmed, and the demands of the rest of life get in the way. It happens to all of us. Give yourself grace. Even Christopher Nuttall had to back off from time to time, heck even the Mountain That Writes* has down days!

I was fortunate this summer. Writing is my escape and pressure vent, so when things were going on, I still had a little time to disappear into writing and put words on screen. Day Job was not in session, aside from one week, and that fell before everything got Interesting. After that, writing helped me compartmentalize and let go of some of the stress, and do what I needed to. I managed to get the second book finished, then everything shut down.

What next? Deal with the right-here-right-now situation, and don’t worry about words. The words will wait. After a week or so, I was able to go back and finish two stories that I had a sense of, but needed to put into text. I had the bones, they got fleshed out, details checked, and are done. That said, I had time and again, made brain space to do it. If you can’t even do that, try a sentence or two. Jot down a story idea if one drifts past, or read a little something for research and make a few notes.

If you have too much going on to even manage those? It’s OK. Don’t stress, don’t beat yourself up. We are all different. My coping mechanism is to escape into worlds that are not this one. Used to, it was lying on my back on the floor, earphones on, listening to classical or dark instrumental music. During grad school, there were days I had no brain cells left, or the emotional load got too much even to vent with words. Some days after Day Job, similar.

There are writing seasons, and dry seasons. Self discipline and having other projects can help if you absolutely must write, but not always. I’m fortunate, that the words come back, ideas bubble up, or I read something that kicks a new idea into demanding a story to explain or use it.

If you are sensing a theme this week, starting with Cedar’s Saturday post, I think either 1) we are tapping a collective subconscious, or 2) a lot of us have been there, or are there. Creativity can change routes, from music to visual art to crafts** to writing fiction to writing non-fiction.***

Breathe. Put your oxygen mask on yourself, help the person beside you, and breathe. Give yourself grace, and time to rest, perhaps to heal. It’s OK. The spark is waiting, just feed it a little now and then as you can. It will come back.

If it does not? You wrote. That’s far more than a lot of people. You created, you put something new into the world, you added to the beauty and grace around us. You will create something again, even if it is not words on a page.

*Larry Correia.

**I dare you to tell a quilter, a person who does felt making and art, or someone who does calligraphy, or someone who builds and paints figurines for games that what they do requires no skill and isn’t creative. I’ll be behind this mountain, watching via remote drone and enjoying the show.

***Trust me, there is creativity in non-fiction, even the kind with lots of footnotes and maps and tables. You still have to put all those bits into order, and translate from diplomat or engineer or ranch manager into story, and that into English. And make it understandable and ideally even engaging, although no guarantees on the last one.