(reposted from http://pcwrede.com/stress/) - Patricia C. Wrede is one of my favorite writers... someone who helped influence 'the voice' of Rienspel... she also has great advice for writers...
"Stress affects everybody’s writing, one way or another, sooner or later, because stress is part of life. How
stress affects people’s writing varies from writer to writers. For some
folks, writing is an escape, so the more stressed they are, the more
they write (though this isn’t that common among published writers,
probably because it’s too hard to balance on the knife-edge of
stressed-enough-to-write-but-not-so-stressed-that-there-really-isn’t-time-to-write).
Other folks hit a certain level of stress, and find that it’s using
every bit of energy they have just to stay alive, and there’s no energy
or brain cells left over for writing. (Which can add stress, if writing
is one’s main occupation and source of income.) For others, it depends
on the kind of stress – if it’s outside stuff like an intense
day job or the sewer backing up, they can write straight through it
without blinking, but if it’s anything personal or emotional, they might
as well forget it. And of course there are the folks who get stressed
if they go too long without writing, because it’s a safety valve.
Everybody gets overstressed at some point, and the result can be
quite dramatic in terms of productivity (and if it isn’t, you frequently
end up paying for it later). And all too often, we make it worse for
ourselves. Over and over, I’ve watched otherwise rational professionals
fall to pieces because they’re under stress and refuse to admit it or
allow for it. Writers who have a major operation or illness and refuse
to ask for either help or a deadline extension, and then work themselves
right back into the emergency room. Writers who’ve had a string of
minor catastrophes, and who beat themselves up for not writing.
(Usually, these are the sort who could sail through any one
minor catastrophe without pause; it’s dealing with five or six in quick
succession that’s too much. So they look at everything one at a time:
the car accident that took a week and dozens of phone calls to the
insurance company to settle, and the kid who fell out of the tree and
broke an arm, and the water pipe that leaked three inches of water into
the living room, and the refrigerator pump that failed and unfroze
everything inside, and the cat who had to be rushed to the vet in the
middle of the night, and the scary letter from the IRS about last year’s
taxes, and it doesn’t occur to them that when all that happens in the same week,
you are allowed to not get any writing done). Writers who are taking
care of a seriously ill family member, and think they should do that,
have a day job, and still write full time.
Some of this happens, I think, because those of us who write for a
living are so very, very aware of how easy it is to find excuses not to
write…and how very dangerous it is to give in to that impulse. Everybody
sneers at the wannabes who only ever talk about the great story they
are going to write some day…and who’ve been talking about it, and not
writing a single word, for the past ten or fifteen years. But part of
the reason we sneer is that we know just how little it would take for
use to slide back into “some day, sooner or later” land. It took a lot
of work and discipline and determination to get to the point where
writing happens and pages get produced on a regular basis, and we don’t
want to have to climb that hill again.
But stuff happens, and if you don’t recognize it, admit it, and deal
with it, you’ll very likely be much worse off in the long run. It’s a
bit like writing, or exercise, or losing weight: other people can tell
you that you need to do it, but you are the only one who can actually
write the words, do the pushups, lose the weight, or manage your own
stress.
There are a bazillion books out there on how to manage stress, and
they all say the same things and they’re all right: exercise, eat right,
take care of yourself, take a break, take a walk, meditate, talk to
people about it, find ways to reduce the stress if possible (move,
change jobs, get a massage, change the locks on the house or the phone
number, quit listening to the news, etc.), see a professional if it gets
to be too much. The one thing none of them advise is ignoring the fact that you are stressed and trying to carry on normally.
The trouble is that the things that are most effective for dealing
with stress all work over the long run, and we’re a quick-fix
society…and most people don’t start trying to deal with stress until
they’re already in over their heads and sinking.
Also, you’re never going to get rid of all the stress in
your life. It simply isn’t possible. Sometimes, you can get rid of a
particular stressor permanently, sometimes, the only thing you can
change is your attitude and the degree to which you take care of
yourself. And one of the important ways of taking care of yourself is to
not beat yourself up when you didn’t write as much as you
think you should. Much as we all love doing it, writing is not always
the most important thing in the world. Not compared to, say, getting
your kid to the emergency room after that bicycle accident, or
rebuilding the house and community that got smashed by the tornado. As
one of my editors says when a writer gets too panicky, “Babies won’t die
if you’re late getting your manuscript in.”
When you are under stress, you don’t think straight. It is useful, I find, to check in once in a while and actually listen to what you are telling yourself. If you’re frustrated and cross because you want
to write and don’t have time, then writing may be part of your way of
coping with stress, and it’s worth making time, even just a few minutes,
to do it (along with eating right, sleeping, etc.). If, however, you’re
fussing about the deadline and your general lack of productivity and
how you can’t possibly be a Real Writer and It Is Your Job/Duty, You
Cannot Waste Valuable Writing Time…stuff it. You don’t have to
write when your Mom is in the hospital or your kid is running a
temperature or you’re worried sick about layoffs or the roof just blew
off in a tornado. You can if you want, but you don’t have to.
Also, sometimes when you’ve been under stress for a long time and
take it off suddenly, there’s a sort of rebound reaction and everything
kind of collapses for a while…which can take a lot longer than you think
it ought to, especially if you were holding it together long past the
normal burn-out point.
When my mother died after a two-year decline into Alzheimer’s, it
took me nearly four years to get back to approaching-normal. I managed
to get some writing done during that time, but not nearly as much as I
usually do. It taught me that if you’ve keep trying to write during a
crisis when you not only don’t feel like it, but really don’t want to
and don’t think you can, then a) you probably should take a break, and
b) you probably don’t have to worry that you’re one of those
pseudo-writers who takes any and every excuse to not-write."
