Burnout

I don't know what's wrong with me this week. I am completely burned out.

I'm tired all the time, my eyes are filled with sand, and everything is pissing me off. No, it's not PMS, it's alarming. Normally I am a very nice person, I swear. But this week I feel like I can barely get up enough energy to get through ten minutes at a time.

I think it's just the job, though - sometimes my job just sucks royal ass, let me tell you - because despite my ginormous case of I Can't Do This Anymore I'm starting to get some good ideas for the next book. What I really want is, like, fifteen minutes at a time to write some of this stuff down.

I love this quote from Jennifer Crusie:

"Writers generally do not become writers to meet people. They become writers so they can sit in their underwear and make up stuff. You can't punish a writer by putting her in solitary confinement unless you take away her laptop, too. And then she'll write on the walls in lipstick. Or blood."

Man, is that ever true. Solitary confinement sounds awesome. No phones, no office politics, no paperwork, no bitching. Peace and quiet, and a laptop. I'm in.

Last night I went on Critique Circle for the first time and critiqued some folks' work. I had some fun doing it, and when I finished, I realized something: I was completely juiced. Rejuvenated. The burnout was gone. Then I went to bed and got up this morning and went back to work, and here it is again.

Last fall we had a labor dispute at my workplace (I told you it's fun, aren't you jealous?) and I was off without pay for two months. The without-pay thing was hard, of course, but that's another discussion. What matters is that in those two months, I finished my novel. I had to do most of it longhand (I don't have a laptop, actually) and I wrote so much my hands cramped, I had big red welts on the ball of my thumb and the side of my middle finger, and I could barely move my arm. I wrote for entire days. You know those scenes near the end of Misery (the book) where Paul has to put his hand in icewater so he can keep writing longhand after his typewriter breaks? That was me. Even the money stress couldn't weigh me down. It was a pure, unadulterated burst of creativity.

Solitary confinement, like I say.

Sometimes you have to listen to yourself, to what you're trying to tell yourself. Right now my body and my mind are telling me there is something wrong. So, I took tomorrow off. Screw it.

I'll go buy a new notebook, and get writing.

Abby