Overcoming The Overwhelming Tendency to Panic

Here’s a tidbit about writing and the overwhelming temptation to panic. My guess is it applies nearly as strongly to painting and public speaking and for that matter child rearing, plumbing and lawyering.

Hope it helps.

Photo Credit: Elvert Barnes, Creative Commons

I’ve been writing for a long time now and I’ve noticed a mental cycle that often threatens to derail me.

It goes like this:

The night before a start into a writing session I feel excited, hopeful and confident.

I just know the next morning I’m going to get 3,000 terrific words done and wrap up an entire chapter in a single day. So the next morning I sit at my desk, read the previous session’s work and then can’t come up with anything.

The words aren’t there. I’m there.

My body is in the chair. My computer is there, but the words are gone.

This has happened to me at least a hundred times now. And there’s nothing I can do about it. I absolutely hate this part of the creative process.

It’s not like building a fence where you just lift a hammer and drive a nail. Creative work requires you to show up consistently and it also requires something else to show up that, honestly, you have little control over.

Or at least that’s the way it feels.

The temptation when the words don’t show up is to panic.

I almost did it this morning. I mean I felt like the world was ending, that I’d have to sell the house, sell the car, sell lawnmower because, you know, I’d lost the words forever.

But these days I’ve learned to do three things to avoid the panic:

Remind myself how many times this has happened before. By this I mean it’s happened with every book, and yet every book got written. Whatever book I’m working on now will get written too.
I calm down. There’s no use in panicking. In fact, many psychologist would say people get addicted to stress and so they exaggerate the negativity in a circumstance in order to feel a sense of drama. This is all too bad, because it will never serve the work. The words will come from calmness, not panic.
I step away. Even if it’s just to walk around in the field behind the house. I get away from the computer, from the stress, then I return and see if the words are there yet. If not, I repeat the process until the following day. Eventually, the words come. Often after lunch.

The point of this post, though, was to say we all get into situations where we think things are going to be terrible. And the sad truth is they might.

But honestly, the chances of things going really badly dramatically increases if we panic.

Now there’s something to panic about.

Overcoming The Overwhelming Tendency to Panic is a post from: Storyline Blog