(“Doodle” by Emek of Emek Studios)
To the uninitiated, being a writer must sound pretty cushy. Let me get this straight: You get to sit with your feet up and drink whatever you want with a blanket on your lap all day? Sign me up!
(Actually, when you put it like that, it does sound like a pretty sweet gig).
But we writers also know that along with the feet up and drinks, there’s a fair amount of grimacing, sweating, and brain-wracking that goes into churning out viable material, often on a deadline, and often without any promise of success, only the thin light of hope guiding our way.
When you slog through like this for weeks, months, years, burnout (or writer’s block) will inevitably make its slow creep into your soul and spirit.
Once that fatigue hits, your writing—which, despite it giving you a hard time, is still your heart and identity—can turn on you and start to feel like the enemy.
To prevent this from happening and keep yourself energized and restore your sense of play and balance, you’ll want to offset the difficulties that come along with writing.
Depending on just how enervated you feel, you may choose to do one of two things:
1. Step away from your writing entirely for a short time and take on other creative tasks or hobbies:
These are excellent but temporary solutions to burnout, and indulging in them will certainly bring you back to better writing and a more energized you generally.
2. For a longer term/sustainable solution to lighten up, maintain your writing practice but incorporate “doodles.”
Remember how you used to draw little squiggles, shapes, word art, or rough illustrations in your notebook when you were bored in class? Maybe you still do it while you’re on hold with the bank or off-camera on a Zoom call.
(Or if you’re my college friend the brilliant artist Emek, you’d doodle whole paintings).
The writing equivalent of those little pictures is simply having some lighthearted fun in words on the page without thinking about what you’re doing, trying for anything, or even being conscious about what comes out.
A writing doodle can be:
Those quick unconscious doodles are wonderful for reconnecting with yourself and filling your creative well.
For many writers, such a shift into giving your writing a light, explorative, and fun treatment either consciously for a while when you’re feeling dehydrated or on a continuum to prevent burnout won’t feel simply welcome; it may be a necessity.
Writing may be an expression of the soul, but turning expressions of the soul into “products” that must behave a certain way to be accessible to others is a job. Without some reprieve, this thing we do to keep ourselves feeling whole, well, and defined can come to feel like a chore.
Further, if you have taken on writing for your money-earning as well, that’s yet another layer of infusing your creative predilections with survival (and is fatiguing on a whole other level).
Doodles break the cycle of writing as “work” and remind you why you not only need to but love expressing yourself in words.
These bridging creativity moments serve as a valuable reset, one that sets you up to be stronger, better, and that much more productive to carry on with your full writing practice, meet project deadlines, prepare for publication, or head off to workshop or a session with your writing coach ready to get ‘er done.
Keep a small notebook, an index card, or even the notes app on your phone open and ready. Collect inspiration, ideas, snippets of overheard conversation, funny or interesting characters, etc. Nothing complete, just enough to inspire you later. That way you take in the world through a creative lens long enough to and give yourself a strong jumping off point to restart your work.
I keep a stack of note cards with context on the front and the visceral memory of what moved me on the back. Even when shuffled and spread out, these note cards reveal patterns I would have missed had I not been careful enough to collect them, allow them their accumulative effect, and speak in that connective language I crave.
Kate Wisel, author of Driving in Cars With Homeless Men (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019)
That same journal, or a smaller one that fits into your pocket/purse, is great for quick notes when you’re on the go.
One might argue that taking a break is the best way to rest, but when you’re a creative person, the opposite is true. Creativity is not something we should rest from; it’s something we should rest with.
Creativity is our gift, one that loves being used and responsible for us entering our “flow” as often as possible. Taking time to engage in small efforts that are fun and short serves more as connective tissue to your creative self than as productive acts of grinding out more work.
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
Continually fostering your creative self ensures you’re your fullest and best you, which means the more energy you have to give to yourself and to others. It’s the best self-fulfilling prophesy there is.
It’s how you do it that matters: turning your creative impulses into no-risk non-performative play is key.
You may have to ease your way into this perspective. Work can easily become a habit. You may need to stop yourself from running with a doodle (using it to become part of or the germ for a story, poem, chapter, personal essay, etc.)
Instead, let the doodle serve its purpose, which is to let the air in. Over time, you’ll get the hang of doodling for doodling’s sake, and making it an active part of your days, knowing that it will enhance all other aspects of your writing, including helping you write better, have more plentiful and “out-of-box” ideas, and feel more energized for the work ahead.
The other reason you don’t want to take too much time off from writing is a long pause is the surest way to get blocked.
Inertia is a very real thing and can damage a writer’s hard-earned work flow.
There’s a reason writers have all kinds of fancy tricks to ease themselves from one day into the next: not writing for a long period of time makes restarting extremely difficult and unpleasant.
Further, as a creative person, by taking a long period of time off, you’re stoppering your natural flow of expression. The result is you may begin to feel edgy and unsettled (imagine yourself a volcano building up steam for two months).
Then when you finally do sit down to write so full of pressure, your writing muscles now rusty and your creative spirit puzzled, you may become overwhelmed by options and internal noise, all of which which invariably leads to writer’s block.
Your best chance at maintaining a healthy writer’s ecosystem is to recognize the value in ebbs and flows as well as ensuring that you play in amongst doing the serious work.
You may also enjoy following the seasons: certain ones are ideal for hunkering down and getting work done, preparing manuscripts for publication, and for striving for getting your work into readers’ hands. Others are perfect for lightening your expectations, indulging in some fun, and breathing new life into your writing.
Regardless of your own approach to your work life, the result of incorporating doodles is a well-balanced person. Not something we writers are known for, but if anyone can burst that tired narrative, it’s us!
A brief respite may be useful for gaining some distance and regrouping, but as a mainstay, doodles are vital for maintaining a steady flow of creative energy, letting the lead out, and giving yourself a laugh or simply let off some steam. The better writing that comes—and the more energized you—will make your whole creative world a rewarding one.
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2 Responses
This is something i have never considered as a writer! Always, it has been that when losing the flow with a book/articles, i just write poetry because that restimulates the real writing intent.
Marie, poetry is such an excellent way of gifting your brain, body, and spirit an infusion of new air. It’s a wonderful practice to incorporate it into your writing! You may also find that keeping a light touch as a “doodle” (rather than hunkering down to write a poem with serious intentions) can actually ultimately become a poem but entirely by accident. Probably because you’re taking the pressure off of yourself to “produce.” Thank you very much for your comment and all the best with your writing! ~Jenna