It’s one of those days. Perhaps the rejection pile is growing larger while successes seem few and far between. Perhaps there’s a series of miscommunications or project delays that makes it seem publication will never happen. Or perhaps it’s bizarre requests from editors who don’t understand The Vision.
Sometimes it happens after finishing a novel. Sometimes it sneaks up disguising itself as the so-called Writer’s Block. It’s almost always exacerbated by bad nutritional choices, a recent lack of sleep, and sometimes even by incipient illness. Whatever the causes, whatever the aggravating factors, when Writer’s Crash strikes, its target is often defenseless and left bereft of coherent thought.
Writer’s Crash is perhaps the hardest thing to deal with. Part depression, part malaise, and part heartbreak, there is no real cure. It affects writers differently. The more prone to depression a person is, the bigger the impact. Coping mechanisms are usually ineffective at best. The Crash starts a chain reaction: loss of confidence, loss of hope, loss of energy, etc. Rejectomancy feeds the maelstrom, sapping strength of purpose and the creative juice from a writer’s brain. The writer acknowledges the Crash, focuses on the Crash, feeds the Crash even more bad ju-ju into one giant loop of Bad Mojo until finally the writer is left to wonder:
“Why do even I bother to try?”
It’s hard dealing with the Crash. Writer’s Block is nothing. Writer’s Block is children’s stuff. The Crash, not so much. But talking about it helps. And writing, putting words down on paper (digital or dead tree), helps. And remembering some very specific writing advice also helps. “It’s okay to write crap.”
Because it is okay. Writing crap may be the only way to work the Crash out of the system. Whether it’s an affirmation (Tomorrow will be better), or a blog post, or a fragment of story dancing around in the writer’s head, the act of writing keeps the writer in practice, even if the words are meaningless. Because at some point, the physical action will spark the enzymes running around the brain, kick off something that draws the writer’s attention away from the Crash.
And that’s the out. It doesn’t happen suddenly, like the Crash does. Sometimes it takes days, weeks, even months. But perseverance counts for something. Writing allows a writer to grieve for perceived losses through an act of catharsis that maybe only the Ancient Greeks could truly understand. Sometimes it works wonderfully. Sometimes the process itself takes forever. A writer who can work through the Crash is, at the end of the day, a stronger writer with a thicker skin and a better understanding of how to maneuver in the world. So we tell ourselves. Sometimes it works.
And in the meantime, we have a hell of a lot of crap to sort through, which makes us feel better about the stuff we wrote when we weren’t Crashing.
One day at a time. One word at a time. One page, one chapter, at a time. That’s the way a writer deals with Writer’s Crash.
