Respect for Writing: When NOT To Write

I took that last week off to prove a point. And also laziness. But the laziness was in service of a point!

It's important to realize that just because you can write, that you're able to get out the amount of material you need to meet your quota, doesn't at all mean that you should. Obviously, the world isn't perfect, there's always going to be something interfering with your life, whether it's a job or an illness or simply a poor emotional state. This past week, for example, I had to care for a pet dog. There are usually a lot of people at the stately McLeod Estate, but for some cryptic, multidimensional Venn Diagram of reasons, all of the assorted hangers-on, serfs and evil minions were absent, and my dog, Matilda, was particularly disturbed by the lack of activity. She was barking at nothing, eating and sleeping at odd hours - waking me up with her, of course, and generally needing full-time care and comfort. I was happy to do it, but such an endeavor took up all of my time and did considerable damage to my circadian rhythms. I had to avoid all work on my book, on my blog, and I even had to cancel my classes from exhaustion.

However, the crucial point is that I chose not to work. I knew that trying to do so when I was so far from peak efficiency would be bad for everybody involved, and once I had made my decision it was actually hard to stick to it. I found myself actually struggling not to write. And every writer has to be able to discern their individual threshold for such a thing, and they have to have the discipline not to misuse it. There's an entire world of difference between being unable to write and simply not feeling like writing, and between being unable to write and being unable to write anything that's not crap. Not feeling like writing is an obstacle to overcome, to bring greater discipline in the act of beating one's own limits, and writing crap is a blessing in disguise, for it's hard to make a good crop without shoveling manure on it.