I’ve Got a New Writing Mantra (…and it’s working!)
It’s been a weird week for me—I’m nursing a self-diagnosed grade-1 tear of my upper hamstring, a ridiculous injury caused by me attempting to do the splits. Now, you might be thinking, Sounds like something a drunk person would do. True, but that wasn’t the case. Well, you’re probably still young and relatively fit. Not quite—I’m an elder millennial who could stand to lose a few pounds.
Truth is, I’m not sure why I randomly attempted this athletic feat. I’m not the type who chases their youth; on the contrary, I’ve done enough partying to know I don’t miss it. Music festivals are my hell on Earth. And the older I get the fewer fucks I give, which is a pretty sweet place to be. I’m quite literally a soup-lovin’ introvert, living my best life with a 9pm bedtime routine.
So I suppose that’s what makes this particular injury all the more funny. I get that.
On to my point…
Why the Old Mantra Wasn’t Cutting It
I’ve had more time on my hands now that I’m icing my butt every 15 minutes, and every time I looked at the blinking cursor of my WIP—still in the vomit draft stage—it made me, well, want to vomit. Then, I’d get even more annoyed because it’s damn-near perfect walking weather—sunny, crisp morning air, low-mid seventies—and this stupid-funny injury has me resting my glutes for the next several weeks.
Cranky and annoyed with myself, I knew something else wasn’t working—and it wasn’t my WIP. It was my mantra: I give myself permission to write garbage.
For type-A rule followers such as myself, that mantra really is a godsend. Sometimes I need actual permission to do things below my typical (very high) standard. I’m grateful for it, really— it got me past the halfway point. Looking back, however, my project had a lot of gusto on the front end. There was momentum, and getting words on the page is much easier when you’re in a state of flow.
Now that the momentum has slowed, even “writing garbage” feels like an insurmountable chore. And the low hum of muscle discomfort has made me less up for the challenge. I needed something simpler:
Just. Make. Words. Exist.
I read a lot of writing inspo when I feel stuck. Various Substacks, Writer’s Digest articles, blurbs on Instagram. (The words in Polly Campbell’s recent Simply Said substack really helped me out this past week.) Sometimes, though, all this writing content blends together. So, if you were the person who put these words in front of my face, I thank you!
Just make words exist resonated with me in a big way. That’s my only job right now with this WIP. I just need words. I can write 10 words or I can write 300. I can write them well, or I can write them shitty—it’s a simple mantra with fewer parameters.
Here’s something else I did…
I reached into my productivity toolkit and pulled out the Pomodoro Technique. I started with twenty minutes. Twenty minutes with this new mantra turned into forty, which turned into a completed chapter. It wasn’t a well structured chapter and there were more swear words than usual, but when all I had to do was make words exist inside of a twenty-minute period, the pressure valve released. I’m less intimidated by this project now— its wandering tangents and mediocre word choices, its vastness as a whole and how much more I have left to do.
One word, two words, three words, four…
Growing up my mom used to say to me: Inch by inch, life’s a cinch; yard by yard, life is hard. It’s that “little by little / one foot in front of the other” mentality that always centers me when I get overwhelmed. So if making my world smaller and less scary is what I do in life, why wouldn’t I choose to simplify my writing mantra too?
In fact, choosing a new writing mantra feels a lot like choosing a new mindset. I could stay cranky and wallow in my dumbassery. But look—I can’t undo that moment of heightened athletic confidence, but I can figure out how to exercise without moving my leg, which will make the next month for me way more tolerable.
Think about your current writing parameters. Are they too rigid? If your writing has stalled, if you’re feeling paralyzed by the workload, consider making them smaller.
Here’s to making [new] words exist,
— E