In Monday’s newsletter, I offer advice to a writer who just finished a big project and is feeling bummed instead of elated. In my reply, I argue that the worst thing you can do is ignore or resist this part of the process . . . but I know there’s a lot more to be said, and I’d love to hear from anyone who’s experienced their own post-project depression and has suggestions on how to move forward!
Interesting exchange, Mason. I sometimes feel after completing a project that went well that when I awakened the next day someone (a mysterious muse, I in my subconscious, who knows?) has crept in and raised some Bar of Achievement. How can I face needing to excel progressively? Fortunately, a few years back I ran across these lines (below) from an interview with Kurt Vonnegut. I keep them handy as a reminder that each hiatus is a totally new opportunity for experiment, for play, for freedom to explore.
“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”
And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”
I've had success by signing up to take a class on something I've not that skilled at right after a project. It lets me go from working at the highest level I can back to a beginner's mindset, where it's much easier to relax and make mistakes. For example I write comedy, and I might take a drawing class or a language class where I can just fail without feeling like it's an attack on my psyche!
Walker Percy talks about this experience in his excellent book Lost in the Cosmos, calling it the "problem of re-entry." Austin Kleon summarizes it well here (and offers his tips for minimizing the problem): https://austinkleon.com/2019/02/08/walker-percys-problems-of-reentry/
I related so much to Heather's use of the word bereft. It's as if the physical momentum continues but the goal and purpose is gone. At my worst, it feels like my identity is gone along with it. I'm emotionally and creatively exhausted but my hands still twitch to create - some kind of nervous-system equivalent to pacing. As Caitlin suggests, sometimes it's helpful to pick up another medium, even more helpful to let someone else lead me through making something. I think it's important to think of the work as a seasonal practice, where sometimes I can allow myself to go back to a process task or a mindless, intuitive task that I know can build toward the next meaningful idea.
I understand this feeling and would like to share something that worked well for me and, given what the writer said about what she hoped her next project might be, could be an excellent option for her as well. Lynda Barry's book WHAT IT IS describes a simple 10-15 minute writing practice based on prompt words and putting yourself in a moment of your memory. The practice is time and space altering and such a great way to tap in to the deep writer self for just a few minutes a day. I've used this strategy between projects and also when on a very long book tour that was so exhausting I couldn't write anything else. Lynda describes the practice here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjofUnKK20M and there are other videos of shorter duration where she guides you through the questions and sits quietly on screen while you write. It is magic.
The last few years I've stumbled upon something that helps me during this transition time. I'll have a big primary project that I'm working towards finishing, and then I'll have a secondary project that's mostly there as "productive procrastination", a fun distraction when the primary project is wearing at me.
Once the primary project is all done, there's my secondary project just waiting to be continued, now becoming my primary! And the nice thing is, at that point the secondary project is still in the early exciting stages so there's good novelty and momentum.
This is my own experience of the little death - which is a scaled down version of the end of a big project. When I was writing my book, I felt completely lost whenever I finished a chapter. The next day when I opened the NEW CHAPTER document, it was just horrible, frightening, overwhelming. After cycling through this process, I realised I just had to sit with that and eventually I would ease back into writing. That became my 'process' chapter by chapter - from the joy of finishing a chapter, the horror of the new one, slow writing, flow, end, begin. I wonder if you can scale up from this? If my very little death is a model for a bigger one? And yes, I could with it myself as the gap between my books is ever widening...
This recent newsletter piece about Heather from Brooklyn resonated deeply with me. First of all, I'm also from Brooklyn! As I shared with you privately, Mason, I also went through a few days of heavy depression stemming from a three day self-imposed exile, a "one man writer's retreat" in a cabin in the Catskills where I worked 12-16 hours a day on my novel. I can't say that the depression I felt upon returning home was related to the completion of a project, because I still have quite a bit of work left on the first draft (and then the self-editing, workshopping, more rewrites to follow). However, the part of your newsletter story that made me go "a-ha!" was where you wrote (and cited research) about the cognitive energy that focused writing requires, and the mental and physical exhaustion that can result from extended periods of writing. When you add isolation to the mix -- well, it's hard not to think of Jack Torrance from THE SHINING. Fortunately, I wrote more than "All work and no play makes Aaron a dull boy" during my three days of self-imposed exile, but I think what I experienced was a combination of literal cabin fever, combined with this cognitive strain you described. I'm feeling better. I put the book aside for a few days. But when I went back to work -- where I am a writer! -- I almost laughed when colleagues said, "Boy, you must feel refreshed and recharged after three days in the beautiful Catskills!" Not quite. I think I need a REAL vacation now. Anyway, I empathize with Heather from Brooklyn, albeit from a slightly different angle. The emotions that accompany a writing project can be, in my experience, more volatile than cryptocurrency! I found that exercise helped...catching up on sleep helped...writing a gratitude list helped (try it, fellow writers). Take care of yourselves, folks. And, Mason, keep up the great work on your newsletter. I look forward to it each and every week. All the best, Aaron
This reminds me of Virginia Woolf! She would lose all morsels of confidence in her self and art after a large project was completed. Perhaps the feeling arises as one realizes that one has not reached a completion but simply let go of its infinite potential. I find, however, that my struggles are mitigated because I hop to and fro between different barrels of creativity--I'll release a short story to a magazine and never want to touch prose again, so I'll write a song; I get sick of the loops of melody and so I write poetry. Recently I have added another medium to my cycle, so all in all, I am never bored.
I've struggled a lot with this too, especially since becoming a parent and primary caregiver of my son. My routines and time had to be completely changed (largely just scrapped), and it wasn't until my son turned about 18 months old that I felt I could re-establish some time and regular routines for my art practice. Now it's definitely about carving out more 'potent' time, usually revolving around the beginning, middle, and end of the day. I get a lot out of setting aside little bits of time that aren't goal-oriented. It isn't much—I'm lucky to get more than 2 hours of undisturbed time to work through things. But it's something, and I'm hoping as my son gets older I'll be able to involve him more in my practice. He's already inspired me to take my work in different directions!
Here’s a tangential thought — perhaps too far out there to make the cut — anyhow: Mephistopheles’ last lure (if I remember it right) was something to the effect of a kingdom: to sink Faust, he issued him a masterpiece in the form of a body politic. The point of this part of the play — at least how I understand it — is that there’s no there there: Faust creates this thing of things, but it’s still a lure, a sham — something to sink him. My view’s that any time I finish a work, the same holds (ha!): some part of me’s looking at that ‘no there there’ — and head on. But my goodness when you’re in the thick of it! Nothing’s quite so disquieting! It's almost like there's an internal logic to it that demands you let go. And that's sad... But maybe there's some kind of good that comes from boxing that sadness (after seeing it for the sadness it is) on the ears. To drop your shoulder, and go. In the first part of the play (if remember it right) Faust almost evades Mephistopholes' first overtures by way of action, as a kind of point without extension. Anyhow, thanks so much for the great letter and response!
Something that has been very useful: Having friends who will make sure celebration happens! If they know you're going to Be Like This, and then make you stop and cheer or go for drinks or have cake delivered to you, that helps so much. Celebrating can feel like so much effort on top of finishing a project! But if other people can carry the weight of that excitement, it's so nice to look back later and see that you DID mark the achievement, and had a good time.
I'm also gradually learning not to even plan to do work immediately after finishing a project. Even if I need to work on something else I will feel down, or collapse. I schedule a wild round of errands and admin work and appointments and things that didn't get done when the project was happening. Also, getting those little accumulated things done sometimes feels (in the moment) like a bigger and more real win. Eventually I want to get back into being creative, but the mind and body needs some time to recover, especially if there was a big final effort to meet a deadline. Then I tidy. Then I work out how to make myself feel really bored, because when I'm bored I want to make things.
Interesting exchange, Mason. I sometimes feel after completing a project that went well that when I awakened the next day someone (a mysterious muse, I in my subconscious, who knows?) has crept in and raised some Bar of Achievement. How can I face needing to excel progressively? Fortunately, a few years back I ran across these lines (below) from an interview with Kurt Vonnegut. I keep them handy as a reminder that each hiatus is a totally new opportunity for experiment, for play, for freedom to explore.
“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”
And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
I've had success by signing up to take a class on something I've not that skilled at right after a project. It lets me go from working at the highest level I can back to a beginner's mindset, where it's much easier to relax and make mistakes. For example I write comedy, and I might take a drawing class or a language class where I can just fail without feeling like it's an attack on my psyche!
Walker Percy talks about this experience in his excellent book Lost in the Cosmos, calling it the "problem of re-entry." Austin Kleon summarizes it well here (and offers his tips for minimizing the problem): https://austinkleon.com/2019/02/08/walker-percys-problems-of-reentry/
I related so much to Heather's use of the word bereft. It's as if the physical momentum continues but the goal and purpose is gone. At my worst, it feels like my identity is gone along with it. I'm emotionally and creatively exhausted but my hands still twitch to create - some kind of nervous-system equivalent to pacing. As Caitlin suggests, sometimes it's helpful to pick up another medium, even more helpful to let someone else lead me through making something. I think it's important to think of the work as a seasonal practice, where sometimes I can allow myself to go back to a process task or a mindless, intuitive task that I know can build toward the next meaningful idea.
I understand this feeling and would like to share something that worked well for me and, given what the writer said about what she hoped her next project might be, could be an excellent option for her as well. Lynda Barry's book WHAT IT IS describes a simple 10-15 minute writing practice based on prompt words and putting yourself in a moment of your memory. The practice is time and space altering and such a great way to tap in to the deep writer self for just a few minutes a day. I've used this strategy between projects and also when on a very long book tour that was so exhausting I couldn't write anything else. Lynda describes the practice here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjofUnKK20M and there are other videos of shorter duration where she guides you through the questions and sits quietly on screen while you write. It is magic.
The last few years I've stumbled upon something that helps me during this transition time. I'll have a big primary project that I'm working towards finishing, and then I'll have a secondary project that's mostly there as "productive procrastination", a fun distraction when the primary project is wearing at me.
Once the primary project is all done, there's my secondary project just waiting to be continued, now becoming my primary! And the nice thing is, at that point the secondary project is still in the early exciting stages so there's good novelty and momentum.
This is my own experience of the little death - which is a scaled down version of the end of a big project. When I was writing my book, I felt completely lost whenever I finished a chapter. The next day when I opened the NEW CHAPTER document, it was just horrible, frightening, overwhelming. After cycling through this process, I realised I just had to sit with that and eventually I would ease back into writing. That became my 'process' chapter by chapter - from the joy of finishing a chapter, the horror of the new one, slow writing, flow, end, begin. I wonder if you can scale up from this? If my very little death is a model for a bigger one? And yes, I could with it myself as the gap between my books is ever widening...
This recent newsletter piece about Heather from Brooklyn resonated deeply with me. First of all, I'm also from Brooklyn! As I shared with you privately, Mason, I also went through a few days of heavy depression stemming from a three day self-imposed exile, a "one man writer's retreat" in a cabin in the Catskills where I worked 12-16 hours a day on my novel. I can't say that the depression I felt upon returning home was related to the completion of a project, because I still have quite a bit of work left on the first draft (and then the self-editing, workshopping, more rewrites to follow). However, the part of your newsletter story that made me go "a-ha!" was where you wrote (and cited research) about the cognitive energy that focused writing requires, and the mental and physical exhaustion that can result from extended periods of writing. When you add isolation to the mix -- well, it's hard not to think of Jack Torrance from THE SHINING. Fortunately, I wrote more than "All work and no play makes Aaron a dull boy" during my three days of self-imposed exile, but I think what I experienced was a combination of literal cabin fever, combined with this cognitive strain you described. I'm feeling better. I put the book aside for a few days. But when I went back to work -- where I am a writer! -- I almost laughed when colleagues said, "Boy, you must feel refreshed and recharged after three days in the beautiful Catskills!" Not quite. I think I need a REAL vacation now. Anyway, I empathize with Heather from Brooklyn, albeit from a slightly different angle. The emotions that accompany a writing project can be, in my experience, more volatile than cryptocurrency! I found that exercise helped...catching up on sleep helped...writing a gratitude list helped (try it, fellow writers). Take care of yourselves, folks. And, Mason, keep up the great work on your newsletter. I look forward to it each and every week. All the best, Aaron
This reminds me of Virginia Woolf! She would lose all morsels of confidence in her self and art after a large project was completed. Perhaps the feeling arises as one realizes that one has not reached a completion but simply let go of its infinite potential. I find, however, that my struggles are mitigated because I hop to and fro between different barrels of creativity--I'll release a short story to a magazine and never want to touch prose again, so I'll write a song; I get sick of the loops of melody and so I write poetry. Recently I have added another medium to my cycle, so all in all, I am never bored.
I've struggled a lot with this too, especially since becoming a parent and primary caregiver of my son. My routines and time had to be completely changed (largely just scrapped), and it wasn't until my son turned about 18 months old that I felt I could re-establish some time and regular routines for my art practice. Now it's definitely about carving out more 'potent' time, usually revolving around the beginning, middle, and end of the day. I get a lot out of setting aside little bits of time that aren't goal-oriented. It isn't much—I'm lucky to get more than 2 hours of undisturbed time to work through things. But it's something, and I'm hoping as my son gets older I'll be able to involve him more in my practice. He's already inspired me to take my work in different directions!
Here’s a tangential thought — perhaps too far out there to make the cut — anyhow: Mephistopheles’ last lure (if I remember it right) was something to the effect of a kingdom: to sink Faust, he issued him a masterpiece in the form of a body politic. The point of this part of the play — at least how I understand it — is that there’s no there there: Faust creates this thing of things, but it’s still a lure, a sham — something to sink him. My view’s that any time I finish a work, the same holds (ha!): some part of me’s looking at that ‘no there there’ — and head on. But my goodness when you’re in the thick of it! Nothing’s quite so disquieting! It's almost like there's an internal logic to it that demands you let go. And that's sad... But maybe there's some kind of good that comes from boxing that sadness (after seeing it for the sadness it is) on the ears. To drop your shoulder, and go. In the first part of the play (if remember it right) Faust almost evades Mephistopholes' first overtures by way of action, as a kind of point without extension. Anyhow, thanks so much for the great letter and response!
Something that has been very useful: Having friends who will make sure celebration happens! If they know you're going to Be Like This, and then make you stop and cheer or go for drinks or have cake delivered to you, that helps so much. Celebrating can feel like so much effort on top of finishing a project! But if other people can carry the weight of that excitement, it's so nice to look back later and see that you DID mark the achievement, and had a good time.
I'm also gradually learning not to even plan to do work immediately after finishing a project. Even if I need to work on something else I will feel down, or collapse. I schedule a wild round of errands and admin work and appointments and things that didn't get done when the project was happening. Also, getting those little accumulated things done sometimes feels (in the moment) like a bigger and more real win. Eventually I want to get back into being creative, but the mind and body needs some time to recover, especially if there was a big final effort to meet a deadline. Then I tidy. Then I work out how to make myself feel really bored, because when I'm bored I want to make things.