On Writing While Exhausted
Haven't we been here before?
It’s the end of term.
I’m tired — very tired.
I know this, but as it’s the start of the holidays I also want to work (for which read write) as much as possible.
But I’m asking —
What can someone usefully accomplish when they’re exhausted?
Don’t they risk making bad decisions, in what they’re writing, and so making it worse?
These are pressing questions, and if you have urgent answers, please do share them.
Here was as far as I’d got when I realised I might have written an entry on exhaustion before.
I looked it up, and there it was — On Writing While Exhausted.
I’d clearly been so tired when I put that together, in January, that I’d forgotten all about it.
Today, I was planning to say something different. But it still starts from what I learned during the time my son (aka Flipper) was very young.
The bottle-feeding months and years, after he was weaned.
I realised then that because I was so zombified, I was in a state closer to sleep and to dream than normal. Um, than I had normally been used to. Than I normally was normally.
(You can see my sentences aren’t working as they should, but I can’t figure how to fix that one.)
What I found out was that exhaustion was a really good state for having rough ideas, and a really bad state for knowing what to do with them.
The problem with exhaustion is that the very idea of overcoming the exhaustion is itself even more exhausting.
If there’s a trick to writing whilst exhausted, it’s making it easy to start.
It’s already having decided what kind of writing you’re going to do, when in a slightly more energetic state, and then just sticking to that decision.
Don’t waste energy on wondering how you should use your energy.
Do what you can, when you can.
For this, I suggest that you have a thing — a cardboard box with a slit in the top and a pile of scrap paper, a particular unprecious notebook, or a file on your laptop’s desktop — which is what you semi-consciously open when you’re in this state.
Default.
(Like the biscuit tin.)
I’m too knackered to work today, but I have a bit of time.
Go immediately to the thing.
Once there, all you need do is add to it — add more of what’s there already but different to what’s there already.
What you’re hoping for, in this state, is for ideas, phrases, doodles, possibilities to come through that you’re too self-policing to allow when you’re wide awake.
Don’t worry if the sentence you end up writing is mush like —
The thing about the bright thing in the corner of the yellow room, with an annoying voice, Monday, sandwich spread.
Mush is good.
The notebook, box or file is intended to be mulch.
Compost, synonym, humus.
It’s something that something can grow out of — something green and unintended.
(See, I’m knackered, but that sentence didn’t exist 15 seconds ago.)
If you want to do some note taking, but can’t think of anything, I suggest trying this Very Useful Writing Exercise.
Or, making a short list of possible characters, by putting down an interesting name (take a normal name and change one letter) and surname (same but change two letters). And then writing variations on this. And then putting them together in couples.
Or, find a note you’ve previously made and rewrite it, changing everything about it that you can into its opposite.
If words aren’t coming at all, then rearranging those that are already there — finding two scraps that can go together — that might be enough for today.
You might end up having a promising idea, or almost accidentally throwing together a useful sentence, but it really doesn’t matter if you don’t.
The important thing is to start. The even more important thing is not to not start.
You know when you try to read when tired, it’s pointless right? Reading is a different cognitive process to writing. Creativity is much more freeform, which is why so many writers swear by writing as soon as they wake up in the morning when the words flow unselfconsciously. Editing, on the other hand, is much more like reading. It requires deeper cognitive effort to both digest the text and to deploy our critical faculties effectively. So my rule is to never edit when tired. Writing has its own agenda.
I have periods of insomnia due to being schizophrenic. I call it the no-sleep blues, which I took from an old song by The Incredible String Band. I can go days with no sleep at all. When I got the no-sleep blues, I often have the shadow of madness fall upon me. It comes with a certain level of mania, which I use to ride a creative surge. Bit like being on pure amphetamines and a hallucinogen. I write while in these altered states, and what I get is good gear. A kind of ecstasy. A delirium. Oblivion, the last dream. I communicate with spectral beings in another dimension and receive visions, which I convert into magic symbols for to transmit the images into other peoples' minds. Of course, I edit it all later, but the raw material is interesting and poetic. It has a rhythm. And, to be honest, it don't need a great deal of editing either. A few words changing for repeats. Not much. Certainly not a rewrite.
Couple of days back, I was up writing past midnight all through to half six, the dawn of the next day. What I had down was fantastic. Even if I do say so meself! I reckon exhaustion can put you in an altered state of consciousness, which opens the ego to the shadows of the subconscious. I don't know if being schizophrenic alters this in any way. Schizos are often in a state of psychosis, and their conscious is overwhelmed by the subconscious, so who knows? But it might be interesting for 'normal' people to explore.