Recently I met a couple friends for Saturday morning coffee. As we dug in on our recent life happenings, I mentioned I hadn't been sleeping well lately. When asked why, I told them, "Because I have trouble sleeping when I feel like I'm not doing enough to meet the goals I set for myself."
My friend stared me down from across the table and very sincerely said, "You should stop doing that."
I know, I know. I should stop doing that. I should be kinder to myself.
My recent creative energy, for better or worse, is rarely of the spontaneous variety. I need to grease the skids with an outline or a list of ideas, or anything other than staring at a blank page.
So it went like this.
Friday night, I wanted to finish writing a new chapter that I've been chipping away at for a while. I was maybe ~2000 words shy of where I wanted to be. But I stared at the blank page for a while and went to bed feeling like a failure.
Coffee Saturday morning. Then, in the evening, I planned. I wouldn't dare call it an outline, it was more like an unstructured list of the general interactions and emotional beats I wanted to include by the end of the chapter.
On Sunday, I worked through the list. Instead of sitting down to write 2000 new words, I wrote a 4-5 smaller segments that fit together into a cohesive chapter ending. And Sunday night, I went to bed feeling incredibly satisfied with myself. Sleep came easily.
I might be growing into a 'plotter' in my old age. So yes. I should stop doing that. I should start writing more lists.