How to Rest

When you have been working six to ten hours a day, seven days a week for two months (yes, this exists), you might have trouble stopping. You have been a prodigious, greased machine, a giant, spewing out words, working ceaselessly to complete this, that or the other WIP, novel, novella, etc. Now, you are exhausted, and to prove it, you look like crap.

You need to slow down, except you can’t. Is that you too?

I thought so! So what can we do to avert some calamity?

Stay away from the 27,000 emails that have accumulated. (For the time being) Stay away from coffee. (Is that even possible?) Stay away from the Internet. (Now you know I’m pulling your leg)

Going back to bed has never worked for me, nor have taking trips anywhere, as that is even more exhausting.

Lying around is no good; then your mind really starts racing.

Sports? Are you kidding? We’ve been sitting for two months, remember? The last thing you want is heart failure while jogging or, more embarrassingly, playing a neighborly game of football.

How to rest...

Enter the gorgeous, wise-cracking dame in B&W, cigarette dangling from her voluptuous bottom lip: “We’ll Rest When We’re Dead.”

Fine, but as Arya would respond with one eyebrow raised: “Not today.”

We only want to cease and desist, to stop, to feel the peace of no deadlines, no chapters to edit, no ideas to develop. We don’t want to clean, or read or do anything else that will make the ideas come.

Nothing.

I guess you thought I was going to continue by giving you some helpful tips. Haha, I have none! No, no, I’m asking you for some!

Enter George Jetson: “Jane, stop this crazy thing!”