Post-Clarion Stress
I'm feeling pulled in a thousand directions, because for six weeks I had one direction -- one. I'm horribly frustrated and feeling incompetent because I'm only writing one or two hundred words a day, on a good day, whereas for six weeks I wrote thousands of words each week. I'm resentful that I have to actually choose which clothes to wear to an office, while for six weeks I only had a few items of clothing with me and they were my favorites and my most comfortable. (Good thing this is a really, really informal office, at least, and I don't have to do the suits-and-painful-shoes thing.) I miss my Clarion buddies.
The stress is leaking out in lots of little ways. I'm trying hard not to be surly and irritable with my family. I feel weepy at any kind word from anyone, particularly if it comes from a writing colleague. I'm far more sluggish than I was at Clarion, on far more sleep than I got there. My focus is shot at the moment; it's even harder for me than it usually is to keep my mind on whatever it is I'm working on.
I sure hope this is only temporary.
posted by Laura E. Goodin @ 11:47 AM (permalink)
4 comment(s)
4 Comments:
Oh Laura, I'm so glad to read everyone's blogs and ljs and find that so far everyone feels as deflated as I do. I have been working on revising and sorting out markets etc but I just can't get settled to anything - and I haven't even the excuse of having to go out to work. It will get better. It will.
Helen
Yeah, sucks, eh? But I'm sure that somewhere deep in my brain, things are sorting themselves out....
I so hear you. I'm feeling exactly the same way. In fact I'm so sluggish I just woke from a 2 hour afternoon sleep and only because Lee made me.
I am feeling unsettled and passionless and narky. I'm glad to be home, but I just have that feeling of 'what next?'
Though I'm a composer, not a writer, I know how you all feel here. I had the same feelings after spending two weeks on the Orkney island of Hoy with more than a dozen total strangers whose only objective was to write as much music as possible for the resident string quartet.
It was a strange period that followed. I can only suggest that what I felt was a kind of grief - perhaps not as intense as a death of a relative/close friend/pet dog, but the same feelings of loss and stress were there.
The way I deal with grief, and it's usually in silence while writing lots of music, was the way I got over Hoy.
Just a thought.
h
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