What's the Difference between these different types of Energy?
Since I began writing full time, I've noticed a difference between the type of energy writing fiction takes. Because I'm using creative energy, there's risk involved. It requires me to make decisions and choose to go down one avenue of story and not another. There's always a possibility that I may wind up in a dead-end or wish I had chosen another route. No one likes disappointment, especially the type where you look back and see hours and hours of wasted writing time!
When I write, I need fresh energy, a feeling of having a full well of creative spark, almost an excitement. I even feel more self-trusting when I'm in this state. I'm committed to allowing myself to create. This happens for me right after sleep. That means the mornings -- or after a nap in the late afternoon.
If I've had a sleepless night, or have been running from pillar to post for three days in a row, I'm creatively useless. If I try to force myself to write in this state, I never produce my best work. I also can't write if I'm exhausted, or feeling ill, if I feel despondent about the state of the world right now, or if I'm scattered because of too many things going on at once. Can anyone else relate?
How Does This Affect Writing a Novel?
Over time, I have come to accept this in myself. I allow the type of energy I have dictate whether I do creative work or mundane chores. I can do mundane house chores while half sleeping. I can clean when feeling ill. I can do laundry and even cooking if I'm not feeling that great. And I do.
Once I know I'm kind of creatively useless, I shift into mundane-chore mode. This is the time I do all my mundane chores. But I've also found that there are even mundane chores in the production of a book, especially if you are a self-publisher. For example: I won't even try to design a book cover, but I can collect inspirational photos into a folder so I have them ready the next morning when I'm refreshed and have more of a creative flow.
Other mundane chores involved in the Self-Publishing world are:
- Research in writing, publishing, social media marketing, KDP ads, etc.
- Education - Watching videos on subjects that you need to know as a self-publisher. This is a great way to harness mundane energy and make it work for you.
- Checking through drafts to make sure you have start-and-end quote marks. This is definitely a mundane chore, but has to be done!
- Listening to your work: Microsoft Word has a "read aloud" feature so when you're too tired to write, you can listen to your chapters being read back to you. This is a great way to find those errors in your writing that you can too easily gloss over when you're the author.
Wrestling with the Force of Energy Never Works For Me:
I see YouTube videos and blog articles by authors who set out very strict writing time schedules for themselves. They don't seem to have trouble following these tight and rigid schedules. I can't operate within that system. I gave up wrestling with my energy a while ago. But I believe I have found a way to make this work for me, not against me. I see my new techniques as respecting my limitations and also harnessing my different energies to work for the same goal.
Learn to Harness The Different Types of Energy:
It all begins in analyzing your own energy levels, and how they play out in your own life. Maybe you have a baby that takes all of your energy during the day. Your time to be creative may be at night. But maybe you can take advantage of his/her nap time to do some of the DIY Publishing mundane chores or research or education.
Once you get a read on how your own energy ebbs and flows, you can more effectively plan on how to shift between these states and harness them both to work for the same goals.
I hope this article helps, especially those just beginning their writing journey.
