Dear Writer,
I remember some years back, when I finished writing Ex and the Single Girl, which culminated in about three very intense months of work, I crawled into bed for a week. I kept telling my kids’ dad that something was wrong.
“I think I might be getting sick,” I said. “I can’t move. I’m so tired. Who are you?”
Then, after I finished Maybe Baby… same thing. A week in bed. Certain I’d caught some kind of terrible virus. It’s the big one, Elizabeth. That kind of thing.
It wasn’t until about The Fortune Quilt time that I saw the pattern and finally figured it out.
I wasn’t getting sick.
It was Crash.
It happened every time I put a Herculean effort into doing something that required total focus and all my energy, plus some, in order to Get It Done. Once it was done, once it was handed in and there was nothing for me to do for a while, I would almost instantly collapse to the floor, unable to do anything for a while.
Crash.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been working at my job during the day, and then working until bedtime editing, proofreading, formatting and recording the various incarnations of How Story Works, which is available now for pre-order on Kindle. The paperback and audio versions are all set to go, and being processed. On January 18, all will be ready for you to buy via Amazon or Audible.
Last night, I finished the last of the actual work.
And then I crawled into bed, looked at Ian and said, “I think I might be getting sick.”
Here’s my theory: When you’ve got a big thing you’ve got to get through—a project, a pregnancy, a move, a career transition—you borrow energy from the future to use now, and your body somehow allows that. You run and run and run as long as you need to, and the second you’re done, your body shows up at the door with a couple of goons and says it’s time to pay up.
And you don’t have a choice.
You will pay.
Now, I don’t know if this is how it works for everyone. But every time someone comes to me after a huge undertaking and can’t understand why they’re so exhausted, I explain the crash to them, and they nod and go to sleep, and a few hours to a few days later, depending on how much energy they borrowed, they’re just fine.
It was crash.
That said, just because you’re not actually sick doesn’t mean you can keep going and not pay the piper. Your body is not messing around. It will take a bitch out at the knees to get paid what it’s owed.
I’ve noticed that, now that I’m more aware of the energy debt I accumulate, I try to build in little mini-crashes to pay back over time, and I find the interest rates are a bit lower.
That said, this project? Totally kicked my ass.
But it was worth it. I’m incredibly proud of this work, y’all. I think it’s really good, and I’m glad I borrowed the energy I needed to see it all through.
But right now? I gotta go to bed.
I think I might be getting sick.
Everything,
L