A bit of a thread about writing right now (typed a bit slowly since I still have a metal splint on my finger, because I am smart). I write novels for a living, which is AMAZING. I cannot overstate that. I love it. But writing comes from a little peninsula in the brain, I think...

...and sometimes, or a lot of time, the water comes up and we can't get there, or we get stuck there (a better problem, but one that makes us weird to live with). Right now, like many other things, writing seems hard. Very hard...

Because it requires focus, concentration, and a certain level of belief. These things are in short supply. So, let me describe my personal path in, out, and around this.

First: recrimination! "I'm not doing enough." "Look at you, you big failure." "Everyone else can do it." "Well, maybe not everyone, but a lot." "Some." "I saw one person post something." In this phase, you do nothing because you are busy punching yourself.

At the start of COVID, here in NYC, I was focused on one thing: keeping everyone...alive? Actually that.I scrubbed, stocked, studied. I tried to figure out where it was safe to breathe. Then, after maybe eight weeks, my brain allowed me to have some focus back for a while.

So I got out to the peninsula for a little! It wasn't a long visit, but it was enough to remind me it was there. Then 2020 was all, "And for my next act..."

So listen. Whatever you are trying to do, you are trying to do it during a worldwide pandemic, during a societal shift, through a season of fire and flood, through what may be the collapse of the republic. PLUS whatever life had in store for you normally...

OBVIOUSLY IT IS OKAY TO BE LESS PRODUCTIVE. OR MORE, IF THINGS WORKED OUT FOR YOU THAT WAY. LET'S START WITH IT IS OKAY TO BE WHERE YOU ARE. My own thought process has now gone like this...

"I need to do [insert amount of work here." "I need to concentrate for eight unbroken hours." "I need to be better." When I failed, I felt like I had rushed for the land on the other side of the water and gotten caught in the wave.

BUILD A BIGGER BOAT, I thought. More, harder, stronger. Didn't work. Then I had the simple moment of, "Ah, it's okay. Doing any f it is better than doing none of it. Deliberately shorten it. Make it achievable, so the cycle feels virtuous." This is all BRAIN CHEMISTRY stuff.

I'm not saying anything new here--but I do find that hearing that someone else isn having trouble helps me work it out.