Writing When You’re Overwhelmed (Part One)

Writing can be an unparalleled source of solace when the world feels overwhelming.

In a cruel twist of fate, writing can also be the source of the overwhelm.

If you’ve been writing for a while, you’ve probably experienced this. If you haven’t, might I humbly suggest that, in fact, well, you have.

Here is what author Chuck Wendig (2023) says about writing in his book Gentle Writing Advice: How to Be a Writer without Destroying Yourself:

You’re opening up a cabinet of thousands upon thousands of available words, and you’re laying those words together, one after the next, sometimes as a layer of bricks, other times as snakes chasing snakes, in order to invent an entire universe full of made-up people and ideas and places, and further, you’re trying to line up those people, those places, those ideas, into a cohesive narrative, a story that takes us from the start of a problem to the end of it, a problem that can be as simple as a desire for love to as complicated as wanting to destroy a brutal empire that spans galaxies. (3)

Wendig’s overall point is that if writing ever feels hard to you, that’s because it is. It’s my personal opinion that the days when writing doesn’t feel hard—the days when words just gush out of you like a busted fire hydrant in a Manhattan heat wave and you feel alive and like you’re a part of the world and like you could run up on the roof and scream out your presence for the whole world to hear but you can’t right now because you’re writing something incredibly important and you couldn’t possibly stop—those days are the reason that any of us become writers in the first place. They are the high that hooks us in and keeps us coming back for more.

But here’s what many (all) of us experience, at some point: Writing is a lot. It can be overwhelming. It can be harrowing, baffling, and exasperating—sometimes all at once.

Writing can feel like the bane of our existence; at the same time, it feels maddeningly like the reason for our existence. (It’s not, by the way, but that’s another post for another time.) What do we do when we’re caught between these two extremes?

Here are a few suggestions of things you can do when writing just feels like a lot:

Focus on Little Wins

Don’t spend too much time looking on the task as a whole. Instead, zero in on one, small part. In her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott (1994) talks about the value in writing only as much as she can see through a one-inch picture frame (16). Pick a small moment—a sentence, a paragraph—and write it down. What should stand out about this is not the fact that the moment was small; it’s that you wrote it down. You’re doing the thing. Nice work.

Frame Your Self-Talk

We all talk to ourselves (some of us more audibly than others). If you’re feeling overwhelmed, try to identify what exactly is making you feel that way. If you can reframe the problem, you can talk your brain out of its fight⁠/flight/freeze response.

Here are some examples:

Instead of “I’m out of ideas,” try “I wonder what I’ll come up with next.”

Instead of “My story stinks and I don’t know how to fix it,” try “What an interesting problem. I bet I can figure it out.”

Instead of “My story doesn’t matter,” try “My story DOES matter.”

You get the idea. Identify the source of your anxiety, and then punch back with some intentional truth-telling. It is infinitely nobler and more admirable to stand up for yourself and your work than it is to operate out of a victim mentality. Ironically, the person we have to stand up to the most as writers is ourselves. You may need to tell yourself daily that you are a worthwhile human making worthwhile work. That’s okay. Stand up for yourself, to yourself.

Take a Break

Back to Gentle Writing Advice: How to Be a Writer Without Destroying Yourself. Wendig suggests that it is OKAY to pause your writing if you are burnt out (57–58). It doesn’t make you a failure. It doesn’t make you a horrible person.

Writing is—to many of us—a tremendous joy; it is also exhausting. Mentally, emotionally, even physically exhausting. Does it breathe life into our souls? Yes! Does it stick a straw into our souls and suck them out like a little kid determined to get the last drop of pop out from their jumbo Slurpee straw? Yes, also that. Does it sometimes manage to do both of those things at once? ALSO YES.

Writing is a beautiful, baffling thing. I’m a big believer in the idea that the process is a little different for everyone. One writer might write for ten minutes every day for five years and end up with a brilliant manuscript. Another writer might bang out a fantastic book in two months of intense eight-hour work days. Both processes are legitimate and valuable. Here’s the thing that is universal for all of us though: taking a break does not make you a bad person. It doesn’t even make you lazy. It just means you’re taking a break. Neutral point. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your work is nothing. (For any Avatar: The Last Airbender fans out there, think of this as neutral jing.)

So, to end Part One of this post, if you’re struggling with feeling overwhelmed, consider taking a break from your writing. The duration of the break is up to you. You are the captain of your own literary ship; do what you need to do to stay afloat—whether that’s taking off a single afternoon or stepping away for a number of weeks. Your “break” could also come from writing for shorter amounts of time or even writing in a different medium or about a different subject. Ask yourself what will bring you some joy, and then do that.

In Part Two, I will discuss how writers can cope when factors outside of writing become overwhelming.

References

Lamott, Anne. 1994. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Penguin Random House.

Wendig, Chuck. 2023. Gentle Writing Advice: How to Be a Writer without Destroying Yourself. United States: Penguin Random House.