3 Tips for Your #NaNoWriMo Anxiety
Happy Halloween! Or as many writers call it, NaNoWriMo Eve.
If you're not down with the lingo, NaNoWriMo is shorthand for National Novel Writing Month. Normies call it "November" and they look forward to long fall walks, a lazy Thanksgiving weekend, and the commencement of the season in which expectations are low and indulgence is high.
People who participate in NaNoWriMo, on the other hand, are optimistic kooks or masochistic nerds, or a little of both. The idea of NaNoWriMo is that between November 1st and November 30th you will write no less than 50,000 words of your novel. If this is an unfamiliar concept to you, you can read all about the history, the details, and the rationale at the official NaNoWriMo site: https://nanowrimo.org
The rest of this newsletter is for those of you attempting it or attempting to do any writing this month or any month, really. When I put out a call for writing topic requests, a question I got was how to deal with anxiety while writing. Like, what to do when it sneaks up on you and tries to keep you from writing even though everything in you wants to do it and wants to be productive. I have some thoughts!
Before I jump in, I want to slightly differentiate between "writing anxiety" and "anxiety-anxiety." There is overlap, of course. If you are diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, it's going to latch on to whatever task is before you. It's a shapeshifter. It has an amazing trunkful of costumes in the attic and it loves to put on the Writing Anxiety cloak.
I'm not qualified to tell you how to manage your anxiety disorder! Though I've been dx'd with GAD in the past, it was quite awhile ago and in retrospect more circumstantial than anything, and I am through those circumstances. SO, the below advice is not meant to fix or minimize GAD, acute or otherwise. That said, I bet some of these tips may help if your GAD is putting on the Writing Anxiety costume right when you try to get down to work.
Okay, so, first some good news: if you experience writing anxiety, you are in fantastic company. Me, for one, if I may be so bold. Also: almost every working writer I know. Writers with awards, writers on best seller lists, writers with lots of friends and good hair, writers with fun Instagrams and amazing book covers and invitations to all the neato conferences and festivals.
Yes, writers like that experience writing anxiety and self-doubt. What can we conclude from this?
That your anxiety about writing is not a sign that you should not write or can't be good at it.
Writing anxiety is emotional energy that is kind of there or not there, depending. It's like weather.
And if you are experiencing an anxiety storm in your brain whether you are doing NaNoWriMo or just a having a normal writing day, here are my top 3 tips for getting through it:
1. Self-talk / mantras.
I use self-talk a lot when anxiety is trying to ruin my writing day. Because I'm a perfectionist and very worried about failure and what people think of me, this one is good for me: I'm not the best writer in the world and I'm not the worst writer in the world. It's 100% truth. Reminding myself that I'm somewhere in the middle along with everyone else can help defuse that perfectionist tendency long enough to write the next sentence.
I can listen to my anxiety later. This works for me when the anxiety chatter is high. It's not trying to fix anything or make it go away. It's acceptance. The anxiety talk is there and I can't rationalize it away or solve a bigger issue right now before I write. It's kind of saying, "Hi, I see you, I'm busy right now, I'll be with you in half an hour." I love how Anne Lamott writes in Bird by Bird about her anxiety and names it Radio KFKD. K-F*CKED. She tries to turn off that station long enough to get her work done. The station is not going away, she's just tuning her dial elsewhere for awhile.
I'll feel better after I write. Many many people have used the going to the gym analogy with writing. You do it because of how it feels after. And if there's one thing that comes close to curing my writing anxiety, it's the feeling of having written.
2. Set a timer
I'd like to say, "I can do anything for 15 minutes!" but there are things I cannot endure for any amount of time: letting spiders crawl on me, eating liver, listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But writing through anxiety? I can do it for 15 minutes. Or 10. Or eight. If my anxiety is screaming, I make a time-based bargain. I only have to do this for 15 minutes and then I can stop and go do anything I want! I put baby* in the corner, set a timer, and give my whole focus for the chosen amount of time to my writing. Usually by the end of the time, I am loosened up and don't want to stop. But sometimes it's still terrible and anxiety-producing and I stop, and it's fine. (*anxiety)
Have you tried caffeine?
3. Use your Phone-a-Friend Lifeline
Am I suggesting you actually phone a friend? What am I, some kind of Gen-X monster? I am, but you don't have to literally make a phone call. You can use text, Slack, DM's, whatever! The point is, reach out, and I don't mean to 5,000 strangers on twitter. I mean to someone in your life who is also a writer and knows you personally and has your best interest at heart. Say, "Hey, I am having a lot of anxiety but I want to write."
Maybe you'll set a time when you both commit to a 15-minute timer and you check in before and after. Maybe you'll jump on FaceTime and have a writing date where you set other time or word count goals. Maybe that person will remind you that your anxiety is totally normal and, look, you've already written x number of words or books so really this anxiety is not as strong as it thinks it is and you can throw it a chew toy for an hour and get your words in and play with it later.
I have this one writer friend, S. We're not close personal friends. We've probably only seen each other once in in the last three years. We don't text or talk often at all. But about once a year, there comes a time when my writing anxiety is suuuper strong and I am thinking things like I should quit writing and get into renting out goats or becoming a dental assistant. I know she understands and we end up talking on the phone. With our voices! If you do not have any single person in your life who understands your writing anxiety, make it a priority to cultivate a couple of those connections.
I hope you find at least one of these tips helpful the next time you're faced writing anxiety--during NaNoWriMo or at any other juncture. And if you have any requests about writing topics this month, reply to this newsletter or reach me in some other way and let me know!