2.5 Go on strike, get deep rest
Maybe you wake up in the morning and you’re tired of working and…
You’re tired of playing.
You’re just plain tired.
And you feel this pressure from somewhere to push through, to force yourself to work through the day, while pretending that you’re doing primal play.
That’s when…
You get to go on strike.
You get to shut it all down.
I’ve had days when I just wasn’t in the mood and I was resisting my writing, but it kept nagging at me all day long. I watched videos, I napped, but I wasn’t ever at ease.
The idea of going on strike is that you make a clean break with your writing. A decisive break. You shut down any hovering shoulds and shut them down hard.
And this matters because…
Sometimes you just need to rest.
You really need this.
And I’m talking about…
Deep rest.
Which I think of as…
Primal rest.
Which I consider to be an essential part of primal play.
And part of what makes it deep is that you get to give yourself over to it, holding nothing back, no nagging at yourself. You get the pleasure of resting. You get the full benefit of it.
I’ll bet you’ve heard the earnest admonition from famous writers or writing teachers that…
You must write every day without fail.
And that includes weekends and holidays and even your birthday.
But hold on, before you jump to and follow that advice as if it were received wisdom and inviolate, I urge you to ask yourself…
What do I need?
What do I need?
What do I need?
And then make your decisions about your writing.
Going on strike is a good way to get yourself back to what you need if you’ve started to drift away from it.
And please let yourself do mini–strikes.
Say you’ve scheduled two hours before breakfast to write, and with twenty minutes to go you finish the final section of a tough chapter, and you’re really, really happy with it.
Now what?
You hear a voice telling you…
Keep working. A real writer would make good use of those leftover minutes. Don’t waste them. Hup, hup.
This is the perfect time for a mini–strike. And you don’t even talk with that should–voice. You just shut it down, and then…
You celebrate.
You did good work, you finished it, you get to enjoy this victory.
And you get to enjoy it just because. Just because you’re in the mood.
And because…
Celebrating deepens the love in your relationship with your writing.
