[00:14] Emily: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:19] Rachel: I'm Rachel.
[00:20] Emily: And I'm Emily.
[00:22] Rachel: Today we're going to talk about how writing is work. Work. Emily, I know you brought this stuff today, emily, so tell us. Writing is work. Where? Why, how?
[00:35] Emily: I know, and I'm sure that a lot of listeners are going, what?
[00:38] Rachel: No, it's not, or it's not my work yet. Not that yet. Yes, it is.
[00:46] Emily: But we're not talking about work in terms of the thing that makes See You Money day job. We're talking about work in the terms of an activity that takes energy versus refills it.
[00:59] Rachel: Yeah.
[00:59] Emily: So I was having this conversation with a client the other day where she's been for three weeks in a row. She kind of sighed, commented how tired she was, and it was really frustrating. She was having trouble finding time to write, and she just wanted to get back to her writing. So we had this whole long conversation about how she had just gotten a huge promotion, like two months ago, and it's been like any big life change, it's an adjustment. It's taking a lot of her energy. And so when she goes to sit down, she was frustrated because writing is supposed to be these were her words. She's like, it's my fulfilling thing. It's what brings me joy. It's my rest, it's my recuperation. And this is something that I hear a lot from writers because so many of us, we love our writing. For so many of us, it's our escape. It does. It brings us huge amounts of joy in our life, and it's just this big, passionate thing that we have so much love for and we want to give it so much time and so much of our energy, right? But we put this expectation on it that it's supposed to somehow reenergize us, and that's just like, it's not possible. Writing, it can be fulfilling, but that's not the same as energizing. That's not the same miss something that fills you up. So I wanted to talk about that today because I think it's really important that we understand that difference.
[02:39] Rachel: Yeah. Writing is, for most of us, a passion. But passion is energy, like, by nature. When you think of the word passion or passionate, it is an active thing. It takes a lot out of you to have passion, and that's, like, not a failure. That's just how it is. That's how it works. And writing is a lot of brain work. It's brainwork that becomes, like, that type of mental load, that type of mental strain that ends up draining you even though it feels like it shouldn't. Because we have been taught that there's a line between physical activity and mental activity. And, like, mental activity, it just goes on in your brain. And so it shouldn't be physically draining. That's, like, complete opposite of true life. Mental activity can still be very physically, emotionally draining.
[03:41] Emily: Yeah. And that, I think, is really hard for some people to acknowledge because we're so used to and I think some of this I don't want to say all of it, but I think some of it is rooted in this idea of Hustle culture, that our rest needs to be productive. But I do think people hold so tight to this idea of writing is my rest, because we don't have a lot of time to rest or write. And so we put this pressure and I think that's what my client was doing is putting this pressure on herself to fill all of her available time that she wasn't being spent on this hugely demanding new job that she's getting used to and filling that with writing and calling it rest. And I think that comes from a place of longing and desire to have more time to write. Like, how many times do people ask, how do I make more time to write?
[04:42] Rachel: Well, we just did a whole episode on how to write faster. Literally an entire episode on the question, how do I write faster? And our conclusion was, don't. Because that question comes from production. It comes from Hustle culture. And that's detrimental to health.
[05:01] Emily: Yeah, it is. And that's what I had to talk to this client. We build vacation into our programs. And so this client and I were talking about, do you want to take a week off? Do you want to take two weeks off? What does your body want to need? Right? Because if we're not taking care of our body in terms of we could talk about what this means, but in terms of truly refilling and re energizing through rest, if we're not doing that, then we run out of juice. You just run out of juice for work and for writing work, as in the career term of work and for family and for all the other things that take your energy.
[05:41] Rachel: Right.
[05:41] Emily: If we're not focusing on making sure that we have time to truly rest, it's going to hurt our writing in the long term. And this is what happened to me when I burned out really hard, is I was treating writing like it was my rest time and I was filling every possible hour with it that wasn't working and building the business and all of these other things that were taking my energy. And I just hit this massive wall and I couldn't write for months. And that's not productive either.
[06:10] Rachel: No. Well, I was going to ask you, like, what happens when you run out of energy? Burnout. Yes. And then what happens when you're in? Burnout. Like a halting. Stop. It's like the train derails and you can't do anything. And like, you're in the lowest pits of exhaustion, both physical and mental exhaustion. And then that means that you physically and emotionally and mentally cannot do things like writing. You cannot bring your full self to work. This question of rest is pervasive in our society everywhere because of hustle culture. I mean, how often are we given vacation days at work? And subtly, but also not so subtly discouraged from using them, as if it's a failure to take a vacation when you need it, and then it's just everywhere. It's everywhere. The message is don't slow down. Don't rest. But it results in, literally, health detriment. You make yourself sick when you get into Burnout. It's so hard. And I think that I was prepared when I became a parent. I don't think that I was prepared for Burnout. That comes from that. We were talking earlier about how you can go so long without having a day off. And, like, when you're a parent, there are no days off. They don't exist unless you physically give your child to someone else to take care of for an entire day.
[07:48] Emily: Yes.
[07:50] Rachel: Not all of us can do that. And also, in the pandemic, that was just impossible. There's no days off. And then if you're a parent and you're a writer and you have a job or you have other responsibilities. And I also want to say that work is if you're a stay at home parent or a person that doesn't have a traditional, like, nine to five job, that still is a job. Like that still is a bunch of unpaid labor. Whatever unpaid labor that you're doing, it's work.
[08:16] Emily: The definition of what work means, it's work.
[08:18] Rachel: And the point is, you need rest. You have to take rest.
[08:23] Emily: Yeah.
[08:24] Rachel: Can't keep that going forward.
[08:27] Emily: I use a hashtag on Instagram a lot like Rest is writing, and it's like a hashtag, which makes it seem kind of silly, but I really believe with everything, and that's why I wanted to bring this podcast up today. It's like, it's so critically important because you can't keep writing if you're not filling up your energy. Like, your writing, your creative energy comes from that well. And rest. We could do a whole episode on Rest. We should have Gallery Yardy come and talk to us about Burnout and Rest. If you don't follow Gallery, we'll put her Instagram handle in the notes. But Gallery talks exclusively about Burnout and how to rest and how to refill. And I just am so obsessed with her work because it's so critical to the creative process to have that energy, because that's where creativity comes from. And I just can't tell you the number of times that I've tried to write when my well is empty. The amount of frustration and guilt and shame right. That comes up when you're sitting down to the page and you just don't have anything to give. We shouldn't be in that place. We should feel the freedom to take the rest because it's critical. It's so critical.
[09:51] Rachel: Yeah. I mean, I had a client come to me, and about three weeks into our program, three or four weeks into our program, she asked me this question. She was like really struggling with, as she described it, procrastination. And as she described it, not having enough time or not effectively managing her time.
[10:11] Emily: That hurts me.
[10:12] Rachel: Sneaky. These are the sneaky narratives. Yeah. So she was describing her day to me. And she's a teacher. She works, which, as we all know, is like an insanely draining job. She would come home from work and that would be her writing time. And what was happening was that she kept procrastinating that writing time and pushing it to the next day. And she had all these things that she wanted to do. She wanted to watch our master classes, she wanted to read, she wanted to do like like other things. But she just kept pushing it off. And she was asking me, how do I fix this? How do I effectively manage my time? And I was like, girl, you are so burnt out. Don't do any of it. Stop everything. Take a break. She was like, I just feel so guilty. I was like, what are when the days that you don't have when you push this off and you and you feel yourself, I just don't have the energy to do it today. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? She's like, I feel so guilty. I feel so guilty for pushing it. I feel so guilty that I should be doing something else. I feel so guilty that I'm laying on the couch or that I'm scrolling on my phone, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I'm like, that is 100% burnout.
[11:26] Emily: Yeah.
[11:26] Rachel: That you are practicing procrastinating so hard that you don't have the energy to do anything that's burnout. But then when you do nothing, it quotes nothing and you're wrapped up in feelings of guilt and shame and stress. That's not rest. No, that's not healing.
[11:46] Emily: It's the opposite of rest.
[11:47] Rachel: Exactly. It's not refilling rest. And so then you keep getting stuck in the cycle because you're thinking, I'm just going to take a break today. But then you're hammered by those feelings of shame. It's like sitting on your shoulder. It's claws into you. There's no way you're going to be able to refill any type of energy when you're telling yourself that it's wrong that you're taking a break.
[12:14] Emily: Well, I think that's one of the biggest ways that people end up in burnout. Because if you are somebody who is so I'm going to use myself as an example. Yeah, right. Like, for the longest time I was very bought into, kind of driven by that hustle culture need to produce, produce, produce, which can come from a place of deep passion. I want my stories in the world. Right? And that makes it so much harder to say, I'm not going to work on putting my story in the world today.
[12:45] Rachel: Right.
[12:46] Emily: Makes it so hard. But I was driven by that. We were building the business. I was just working all of the time. This is during the pandemic because I had nothing else to do. And where the heck was I going with this?
[13:03] Rachel: We were just talking about rafting from a place of guilt is not yes. Okay.
[13:08] Emily: So as soon as I started feeling tired and the moment you started procrastinating, then I would put all those voices you're lazy, right? You're not driven enough. You have all this time. It's a pandemic. You're supposed to use it. Make your dreams come true. Why can't you get off the couch? Right? All of those self defeating voices drained my energy so fast that that, I think, is actually what pushed me into the true burnout, where I went from exhaustion to burnout because I couldn't handle being tired and I couldn't handle letting myself refill. And so those those critical voices just drove me into the ground. And yeah, it's about being intentional. And our past episode, slowing down and giving yourself the time to refill your well alongside using your well to write.
[14:03] Rachel: Yeah. And I want to give our listeners something actionable to do. Rest. Number one, rest. But there's gallery follow gallery. There is a reality that life is busy and you have responsibilities, and it's not always possible for you to just drop everything and rest, refill, whatever it is. I'll say one thing, though, is that the more rest you incorporate, it doesn't feel like it compounds. Like, if you're taking care of yourself, you don't need to, three months from now, take a week off. Right. Because you're continually taking care of yourself throughout that time period. So the more you push off rest, it's going to come back for you. You are going to have to rest. But if you take care of yourself along the way, you balance it up. So anyway, the reality is that many of us are super busy. And how do you schedule it into your day? How do you work it into this? How do you save that time? Yeah, what I worked on with my client is that you cannot do everything. And that is hard for many people, myself included, to accept. It feels like a failure. It feels like you're lazy. It feels all of those shame feelings.
[15:23] Emily: Once again, especially when there are things you want to do.
[15:25] Rachel: Yes. But you have to choose, and you have to choose your own. Rest very high on that list. If you're putting rest at the end of the list, you're never going to get to it. But the list maybe you've heard of this, but it's a very common thing in women in burnout or women in parenting or women in the workplace where you're juggling rubber balls and glass balls. Have you heard this before? Okay, so basically, you're just constantly juggling. Some of those balls are rubber and they can bounce, and some of those balls are glass. And if you drop them, they're going to break. And you can drop the rubber balls, they will be fine. But if you drop the glass balls, they won't. And so you get to decide what's rubber and what's glass. And you hold onto the glass ones, and you drop the rubber ones when you need to, and those are going to be okay, and you can come back to them. It's fine. And that rest is a glass ball. You can't drop that one. You have to keep it going. You have to keep it as part of your life. So take the day that's what we did with my client was work one day in her schedule. It was a day that she this is like, step one for us. This is not end game for this client. We are working towards more rest, but we chose her rest day as a weekday, a day that she works because she does nothing else when she gets home, besides whatever feels good, take a bath, read, play video games. One day, I hope that we're able to get her to a spot where she could take a full day of nothing, a full day of rest, like conscious, guilt free rest. But her weekends, she still needs to be doing things. She still has glass balls to juggle.
[17:12] Emily: Yeah.
[17:13] Rachel: So we're starting small, just a little bit, a little bit at a time until you can work yourself to that place. And we're trying to prioritize, what are the glass balls and what are the rubber balls, and for now, we're letting the rubber balls drop. You don't have to read that book. If you need to take a day off, you can come back to it later. So that's my challenge. Like, what is glass and what is rubber juggle that keep your rest sacred and stop feeling guilty about it. Yes.
[17:46] Emily: It's about boundaries around your rest, advocating for yourself, and it's about figuring out what is going to work for you because it's going to be so different for everybody. Right. For me, right now, I take Sundays completely off of everything because I'm able to do that when I'm building a family. I'm not going to be able to do that. So it's going to look differently. This client that you're working with, she takes an evening off every week, right. But that's guarded time, safe boundaries around it. It's sacred. I have another client who she has a full time day job. She is a wedding photographer, and she's writing an epic fantasy, three major things.
[18:31] Rachel: Right.
[18:31] Emily: And so she has learned about herself that her writing time is not during wedding season, that she can't do those two things simultaneously to the same extent. And so she works really, really hard in the winter to the point of, like, border of burnout, because she knows that she's then going to take several months off to work on something else. And she wants to be able to have the rest time in her day that she wouldn't if she was trying to do those two businesses basically at the same time. And so knowing are you seasonal?
[19:03] Rachel: Right?
[19:04] Emily: Do you need an evening off each week? Can you fight for 2 hours? Can you have your husband take the kids for 2 hours on Fridays? Right? Whatever it is, knowing that it's coming I think would be really freeing. And knowing that you're not going to have to feel guilty about it is so important and taking expectations off of what that time is going to look like. When I first was burnt out, instead of taking this was before I started taking Sundays off, but I would take Friday afternoons off. So I just had like a couple of hours because it was the pandemic. And I work and live in my home with my husband who works and lives in our home. And I was like, I need time away from you. And so while he was working on Friday afternoons, I took Friday afternoon off and then I would work on Sunday instead. But I took those 4 hours and I was like, okay, we're going to rest. We're going to learn how to rest. And it felt like shit for months. I would just sit so uncomfortably for 4 hours. Like, what do I do? I don't know how to rest. I don't know what is restful. And I just had to sit there and stare into space for hours on end every Friday. And I hated it. I hated it so much. I was like, I could be doing all these other things that I want to do. A, it takes time to learn what rest looks like for you. And B, sometimes it just feels like shit. Like right now I'm taking a break between books and it feels really weird not having a project to work on. Feels like I don't know who I am. I'm like, this book is done. I haven't even started this one yet. There's no characters speaking in the back of my mind like, who am I, right? And so just allowing it rest doesn't have to feel good. It's still important. It's still important to have time when you are not spending energy. And instead, even if that's sitting in space and like scowling at the wall for two, 3 hours.
[20:58] Rachel: Yeah, quick. Yeah. I think knowing like what is refilling to you and knowing what is draining to you is a good if you're going to sit in silence because you're not sure how to rest, start there. Start with take a nap.
[21:15] Emily: Yeah, take a goddamn that. I get so more of myself in those first few months on Fridays that I would fall asleep and then I'd be like, I wasted my breath's time.
[21:24] Rachel: No, I didn't. You know, it's funny. So with the client that I've been working with, we talked about one day she came to a coach at college. She's like, I'm so tired. Why are you tired? Like obviously we're working through Burnout. But she was like, well I've been staying up really late and just like I don't even know what I've been doing. And I'm like, well what are you doing? She said, I'm just scrolling on my phone. Like, okay, what's wrong? She said, Well, I just wish I was going to bed earlier. I was like, okay, why do you feel the need to scroll on your phone? I don't know if you've ever heard this term. When I first heard of it, I knew it as a Japanese term. But when I looked it up to talk about it with her, I saw it was a Chinese term. So I'm going to say it's an Asian term, but it's called revenge bedtime procrastination. Have you heard this before?
[22:14] Emily: No.
[22:15] Rachel: It's an Asian word, either of Japanese or Chinese origin. I saw conflicting resources about both. But it basically is like you're so busy during the day that you push back your bedtime as revenge. Like you're trying to hold on your Bedtime Procrastinating because you need your own.
[22:34] Emily: Sounds like a thing that parents will be familiar with.
[22:37] Rachel: 100%. This is all I do. This is all I do at night. I lay down. It's 10:00. I'm like, I should go to bed but I really need just some time to myself and my phone scrolling on Instagram. Yeah, if that's you, you're probably in Burnout. Like you're probably getting to that spot. That is something that you can like catch. Like why am I doing this? That's not rest. Revenge bedtime procrastination is not rest.
[23:07] Emily: It's happening because you didn't have any time to have rest.
[23:12] Rachel: So if you're not sure what it is that feels fulfilling to you, think about that. It's okay to start with scrolling. Sometimes that's like all that I can do if I'm so tired and that's all that I can do. But it's the guilt that you need to let go of. That's usually the problem. If you scrolled on your phone for 2 hours, don't feel guilty about that. Something about your body needed that time. But you've got to find something that is actually fulfilling to you. Maybe it's family time. Maybe it's reading. I find reading very creatively fulfilling. Some people don't. Creatively filling that energizes me to read, some people it doesn't. So it can look different for everyone. Maybe. One of my clients found exercise and that is something that drains physical energy. So at first I was like, are you sure? Are you sure you want to do that? Is that your rest? And he was like, this is the only day that I feel not guilty about exercise because I'm not writing. So for him we started there. Okay then if the day that you take off writing is the day that you exercise, that's a great start. I think you just need to find this out. I think you need to sit with this for yourself. And what is the version of rest for you that's going to feel the best for your body?
[24:32] Emily: Gallery would say that exercise is filling.
[24:35] Rachel: There you go.
[24:35] Emily: Because it's giving your brain a break and it's keeping you healthy. It's keeping your body in a place where it can manage energy. One of the things that I have had to learn to do is not fill my ears when I'm exercising. So I go on a lot of walks and runs and hikes and stuff. And for a long time I would have to have an audiobook or podcast or something to fill my brain. But that is more energetically draining, I think, for some people, than just letting your mind wander. And for some people, letting your mind wander is very difficult. So go with what feels right to you. But yeah, that's movement. Call it exercise, gallery calls it movement. Yoga, stretching, going for walks, things like that. To move your body is a really great way to fill your ball back up.
[25:31] Rachel: Do you know why? So I'm sure Gallery talks about this. I'm reading a book called Burnout the Key to Unlocking the Stress.
[25:39] Emily: Like Emily.
[25:40] Rachel: Is it Naga?
[25:41] Emily: Nagas.
[25:42] Rachel: Nagaski. Nagaski and her sister Amelia, something like that. I'll look it up just to be sure. So we're saying the right thing. It's called burnout. The secret to unlocking the stress cycle. It's by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. I'm reading it now. And the reason that your bot, that movement relieves burnout or helps you heal from burnout is because when you are in Burnout, you are in a constant state of stress. There are stressors in your life that are putting your body into a stress cycle, and you have to complete the stress cycle. So your body withholds stress as a form of energy where itself becomes tense. Your shoulders tense up like you withhold emotions as a physical neurological response. It's energy in your body, and you need to complete the stress cycle to get the energy out of your body. It has to come out. So movement helps get that energy out of your body, finish the cycle, and then you're back to baseline. This is a very interesting book, by the way.
[26:51] Emily: It's a great book.
[26:52] Rachel: 100% recommend it.
[26:53] Emily: We'll put it in the show notes for everybody in case you want to go check that out as well.
[27:00] Rachel: Okay.
[27:01] Emily: Yeah. So bottom line is, writing is work. Creativity takes work, and you need to fill your energy just as much as you know you need to spend it to write your book. And so schedule that time and protect it. Make it sacred and be patient with yourself.
[27:22] Rachel: Yeah, if you're like. But rest means my timeline will be off for my book. Go listen to how do I write faster episode. Because you need it. You can slow down. It's okay to slow down. You're only on your own timeline. And your health is more important than a deadline.
[27:44] Emily: Yeah, your health is incredibly important to finishing your books. Don't neglect it. All right? If you wanted to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[28:00] Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course, the Magic of Character Arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[28:09] Emily: Link is in the show notes. We'll see you there.
[28:12] Rachel: Thank you. Bye.
