When Writing is Hard: Energy

Welcome to the third installment of our series: When Writing is Hard. So far we’ve looked at issues with Time and Inspiration, and today we’ve going to dive into our next topic: Energy. 

Personally, I find that energy tends to go hand in hand with time. When I don’t have a ton of time to write, that usually means that I’m very busy doing lots of things that take energy. And as humans we have limited amounts of energy, both physical and mental. 

Writing is a creative process that comes from deep within you. It is an art form that depends almost solely on the creator to even exist. So to be fair, it takes a lot of energy even on an easy day. It might be easier for some people than others. For me, it depends on the type of writing. Drafting a novel usually isn’t tiring. Writing a blog post is a bit more so. However, some stories require more effort than others, so it can vary. No matter what, writing requires energy. 

In this world, energy is always being sucked out of us, for good reasons and bad ones. It’s unavoidable. Work, school, people, responsibilities –it all takes energy. And a lot of it is not optional. For me, school and work are the big energy suckers. Work takes physical energy, and since I have a job that revolves around people and interaction, it can be draining even for an extrovert. So that takes my social energy, my quota of people interactions if you will.  

And then I have school. That takes mental energy, usually the learning kind rather than the creating kind. But it still drains from my finite amount of energy. So by the time everything that needs to be done is done, there’s not much energy left for writing. However, through my busy seasons I have learned some tips to preserve my energy. This wouldn’t be a very helpful blog post if I didn’t have anything encouraging to share with y’all! Let’s get into it.

Tip #1. Give what you can. Protect what you can’t. That’s what I wrote on my writing calendar for the month of October, a month when I knew that my life was going to be super chaotic. This is what it means to me: if I give ten minutes of writing during a day stacked to the brim of activity, then I accomplished the give what you can part. If that was all I could give, great. Protect what you can’t means that when I have no creativity left to write, then I’ve got to guard what little that I have. That means not wasting my sparks of creativity on something that’s not going to fulfill me. That could be anything from not working on my latest project to not writing at all. If my work in progress (WIP) is taking a lot out of me creatively, then that means writing something for fun without any self-judgement. Enjoying writing for what it is. 

Tip #2. Get enough sleep. I see you over there pulling an all-nighter to work on that project and then chugging three cups of coffee to stay awake the next day. I see it. I will say that there is a time and place to stay up late writing. I used to be a before-bed writer. But you can’t pour from an empty cup. If you’re trying to do everything with no rest, then you’re not going to do anything well.  So go to sleep.  Seriously 

Tip #3. By now you’ll have heard the term Weekend Warrior several times by now. I keep using it for a reason. A weekend warrior is someone who focuses their energy onto the weekends to fulfill their writing goals. The weekend warrior does their heavy lifting on the weekends, whatever that looks like for you. Writing for an hour. Two. Thirty minutes. Whatever you need to get the job done. Use the time you have on the weekends to crush your writing goals. 

Tip #4. Break writing into sizable bites. For me, this means writing in ten minute increments, usually before I get ready for bed. Now, I go to bed early, so this is manageable for me. Some of you might not get home until very late though. If that’s your case, pause right here. Think about where you have ten minutes. Where do you have five to fifteen minutes where you can sit down and give what you’ve got? Once you’ve thought of something, then you can move onto tip 5. 

Tip #5. Write something you like! If you’re drained of energy, do something that fills you up. If you have a project staring you in the face and you have zero energy to deal with it, take five minutes and write something. But there are a few rules to this writing. First of all, you can’t edit it. At all. Second, it has to be something you want to write. Those are really the only rules. I used to do this for school all the time. It’s called Being Gorgeous. You write for five minutes or however long you want to write, maybe a page, and the only point of that writing is to be. It just has to exist. So you can’t edit it, or want it to be better, or fix that one little word. All you have to do is write it. This could be a warm-up for something bigger, or it could be exercising your writing muscle for the day. Being Gorgeous lets you write without having to worry about it being perfect, or even good.

Tip #6. Don’t write. This may sound counterproductive or plain silly, but hear me out. Sometimes writing sounds exhausting because you’ve been writing so much. Sometimes you have to take a break, be it for a day, a week, or a month. Any of those amounts is just fine, as long as that’s what YOU need. I take about a week in between projects. That might sound really short, but I used to take no breaks whatsoever. This is growth for me, lol. So give it a day. Recover from your busy life, and give yourself some time. 

Tip #7. Stack the little bits. This goes hand in hand with tip four. When you put these two tips together, that’s when things start to happen even in the midst of a busy schedule. Write for ten minutes before you eat breakfast. Write for fifteen minutes on your lunch break. Write for twenty minutes when you’re done with school. Write for fifteen minutes before bed. Suddenly, you’ve got a whole hour’s worth of writing done, and you did it in small enough amounts that it never took more energy than you had. Let the little bits add up. 

Tip #8. Work on something else. Maybe you don’t have energy to draft this project, but you do have energy to make a character collage. Or you have mental space for plotting the outline. Perhaps you are able to add to your pinterest boards for this book or polish up your character portfolios or make some cover art. I find that using a different part of my brain can help me get something done, and can even get me in the right headspace to work on the project that I was planning to work on. 

That’s it for my tips for writing when you don’t have much (or any) energy. As with every installment of this series, remember to have grace. I’m also going to add that you’ve got to have discipline too. Having grace is very different from quitting on something before you’ve even tried it. Yes, understand the days when you can’t show up. But make sure that you do on the days that you can. 

If you have any tips you think we should know for days when we don’t have much writing energy, drop them in the comments!