Days of rest

[mrissa]

Days of rest are good for me on their own merits, a chance to breathe deeply and let the shoulders drop, a carved-out temporal space. But they're also good for me as a writer, because it gives me a chance to sit back and notice what my brain has been doing. This morning I had to make three sets of brief notes on What We Did to Save the Kingdom, because I noticed that the way I had been writing all week implied an entire other set of things (there are smugglers!). I put the notes into the appropriate file, I closed the file, I moved on. Another set of notes. And again. I may have more. But if I'd been prosing and prosing after the first set, I very well may not have noticed the second two coming on. For me, one of the things that's necessary to my good mental health as a writer is to give myself room not only to think but to notice what I've thought without other things piling in on it quite so fast. Space for quietness of brain.

I do this physically, too. I work out six days, most weeks. The seventh day, I rest and notice what my body is doing. How my lungs are breathing. How my muscles move and how they stay still. Balance and alignment. It's usually on this seventh day that I notice that I need to ease up or push harder on something, that I need to change the mix of what I'm doing that week, that I need more water or more breaks from the computer. And if I find I'm feeling fidgety, I'm still allowed to do whatever the body seems inclined towards that day, just as I'm allowed to scribble down snippets if they seem like they're important on my days off from writing. But I try to take the time to find out.

I think that one of the things about being an adult* is noticing one's characteristic errors and figuring out how to work around them. Are you generally early or late, or does it vary by circumstance, and if so, what circumstance? Are you generally repeating yourself or forgetting to tell people things? Are you generally an object in motion or an object at rest? I understand that for some people, taking the space to not work out, to not write, to not practice the piano, to not do whatever other thing they genuinely think is good and worth doing, means that they will be more likely not to pick it up again the next day. And so if they really do want to do something, they need to try as hard as they can to never stop. This is why they tell young writers, "You must write every day if you want to be a professional." Like nearly every other piece of writing advice, it's true for some people and not for everyone. Like nearly every other piece of writing advice, it's best thought of as something to try, not something that'll definitely work.

I'm writing this down because this is the way that's true for me, and I have run across other times when people had their eyes open to writing out of sequence, or to thinking in terms of relationships instead of individual character, or any of a number of other ways of constructing tribal lays.

*Being, not becoming. I don't think there is some magical year -- divisible by 10, no doubt -- after which you know all of the inner workings of your own brain perfectly and can just coast along through the rest of your life. I expect to sit up straight suddenly, one day when I'm 92, and say, "Oh! That's why I've always done such-and-such!" Adulthood is an ongoing process, or ought to be.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Apropos of our other discussion, your first comments are similar to why I rarely if ever write all the story I've got in my head on a given day. I try to stop before I hit the end of what I can see, because I don't outline, and I need time to think about what I can see to make sure there isn't something else important I should be noticing before I put it down on the page. If I outrun myself in that fashion, bad things happen.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I sometimes have the whole story in my head at once.

This tends to be physically painful when it's past short story length.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

When I was preparing for the bar exam (well, two of them, actually), I studied for six days a week and worked out five days a week. I was very protective of those Sundays off, and it worked out well - I passed both tests and was in just about the best shape of my life. I believe very firmly in a day off. If I never stop moving, I don't ever know where I am.

[redbird]

Good point about characteristic errors, and ways of handling them.

These days, I work out twice a week, for 90+ minutes each time (plus the usual walking and occasional random squats and the like). This works in part for logistical reasons (travel to and from the gym, and time to shower and change, are the same whether I work out for twenty minutes or two hours), and in part because it gives me a pattern, so I don't have to stop every morning and think "do I want to go to the gym today?" This is an approach that works for reasons partly practical (and hence changeable if, say, I move or they open a gym in easy walking distance of my home) and partly psychological, and thus specific to me. I tend to be a creature of habit, so it's worth my while to create good habits.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

For me, I take rest days (in physcial things at least) so that I can keep going. Otherwise I get burned out and stressed and unhappy and am more likely to want to stop what I'm doing for good or at least for a long time. Planned rest days help prevent that.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

There are smugglers! They play hockey!


I like smugglers and pirates. They're cool. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They do not, in fact, play hockey. This is not a part of the landscape where hockey could much exist -- not much for frozen smooth surfaces all that often.

In this case, the smugglers are even genuinely just in the face of injustice, not just Romantic But Wrong.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

Imagine hockey on jet skis.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. That's Not Hockey. Might be something else fun, but not in this fantasy novel. You all will have to content yourselves with the smugglers flanking the guy on the ornithopter.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Of course not. It's water polo.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Dude, water polo would be so much better if it involved more jet skis and less having your head pushed under water by the other team.

Not that I would know or anything.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Here is my experience of water polo:

Many people are splashing around yelling on the other end of the pool. I can see nothing.

Something comes flying out of nowhere and comes very near my head. People yell at me.

Then they go away and yell farther down the pool.

Eventually I get out of the pool and shower and take an Advil.

Whee.