signals from the house of chaos: another winter passes

by Luke McCullough · March 8, 2014

Rough year so far. I have to say I am not a fan of two-thousand-and-fourteen. Starting off, my sleep schedule is pretty messed up. Now, no one sleeps well, but this is not the normal sort of crap we all have to deal with. I have always had a bit of trouble falling asleep, but I was a night-owl and I would sleep in. First thing that happened was I lost my ability to sleep in. I find myself waking up earlier and earlier. And this reached a breaking point at the beginning of the year, I was staying up later and later, and at the same time getting up earlier and earlier. I spent a lot of time staring at my alarm clock in the morning, just waiting for it to go off.

Needless to say, this made writing a bit tough, in fact made me pretty grumpy and all around not so pleasant. This continued into February, until I saw the doc and got something to help with the sleeping. It is still not great, but it is better.

One of the things I noticed was I was finding excuses not to work. This was leading into a death spiral of self-doubt. (Was I avoiding writing because I was not interested in the project or because I was a crappy writer. If I stopped was I stopping because the project was boring me or I could not write. If I put the project down, …) So, I took a long hard look at what I was doing, and why it was not working. I decided to put the current project on hold and switch over to a new one.

Well, I can now say that in the opening days of March I have now produced more than I did during all of January and February. So, I am going to call the change-up a qualified success. I still don’t have anything completed, but there is forward motion again.

The things I took away from this are:

More things in the air at the same time. I got paralyzed working on only one project. I need to have a few at different points as a release valve when one project or the other becomes blocked.
Even if I am not writing, I need to get some forward progress. Editing, plotting, etc.
Setting a project down is not abandoning it. I am going to revisit the old project, just need some space away from it right now.
Trying to psycho-analyze yourself and your own actions, especially over analyzing them, is bad. And, that way leads madness.

If you find yourself never finishing anything, that might be one thing, but sometimes putting one project down is good. I have found letting another project breathe can lead to better writing and a revived joy in the whole process.

Which is the biggest and best upshot of this whole thing. I feel the tug to write more often and sad when I have to walk away.

Luke McCullough

Luke was born in a small town in western OR, and by the time he graduated high school had moved around enough to never feel like his identity was tied to anyone place. After college in PA, he worked a for a big company outside Seattle, WA doing small parts of interesting projects. And now is employed doing interesting things for a smaller company based in NY, NY. He currently lives in Arlington, MA. Reading and writing have been a passion his entire life, though it has only been more recently that writing has been a focus for him.