I suspect I am like many other writers, sweating a lot about what publishers are thinking and doing with my submissions, or what is happening in the great abyss that a contracted work falls in to before it emerges many months later as a published book. We tend to be overthinkers. It comes with the territory. Honestly when your job centres on extensive brain noodling to create meaningful, believable and rational plots and characters, it is hard to shuck off this intensive thinking. We start to apply it to EVERYTHING. We are gap fillers, using our empathic skills to scrutinse and prognosticate on what others are thinking and feeling, about us and our work. We follow trains of thought into tunnels and out the other side. We stop at the most unexpected stations, and sometimes we get out where we shouldn't.
If we write full time it means we have more of this overthinking time. We don't want to be obsessed about how long that submission is taking and what it might mean. We don't really want to imagine all the possible implications of that long silence following our enquiry. We're just made that way. That's why we're writers. Its a pretty rubbish side effect of the job. You can suggest 'keeping busy' all you like but keeping busy for a writer just means more thinking time. Daydreaming, considering, wondering, obessessing, crying into our coffee ....
And then you add in social media. And as a writer it can be a useful tool in the drive to raise one's profile, broaden visibility, and help with branding and book sales. People tell you to avoid it, or spend less time on it, and sure it can be a vast rabbit hole that has all the qualities of a gravity well. But it's not the time wasting concerns that do my head in. Its the fact that if you join the writing community on any/many platforms (because that is what writers do), it is a constant reminder of the achievements and successes of others. Have enough followers/friends and you can sprint from grateful, excited post to grateful, excited post about book launches, festival invitations, award wins, film deals and bestselling statuses which only serves as a contrast to your own current stalled position in the wilderness. Of course the relentless positivity is not some skewing of an overabundance of good things happening to everyone else except you, its just a normal pattern of people mostly sharing the good news and keeping mostly schtum about the crap things, or an absence of tweets about an absence of progress in their careers, or whatever. Be part of a big enough group of mostly writers and the normal occurence of good news can't help but look top heavy It just seems like everything is happening to everyone else except you, but its not true. It's an artificial effect.
Of course when you combine the two - overthinking and everyone else is clearly doing way better than me - it can become downright unhealthy. So what to do to maintain sanity?
1 - buy some jigsaws/books of sudoku/code crackers. A most excellent way to keep the brain too busy for random thoughts. If you need to switch off, do some puzzles. Reading is great, and important for writers, but you need to find things unrelated to writing to truly switch off.
2 - make sure you follow people on twitter/facebook/instagram who aren't writers to get some balance. I recommend squidthegriff on instagram and endless screaming (@infinite_scream) and @JamesBlunt on twitter.
3 - remember none of it is real. It is our minds working over time and the false evidence of social media. (however, should your worst prognostications turn out to be true remember a) most of your prognostications weren't, and b) confirmation can be liberating, allowing you to process it and move on)
4 - have a strategy for when you feel yourself slipping down the slide of obsessiveness. This strategy might include knitting or baking, exercise, and looking at cat pics/videos. Telling a writer friend can help but can also intensify the obsessiveness - have a list of people you can approach who will listen carefully, give you a wee slap and provide a rational explanation for whatever thought process you are having.
Hmm - I'll keep thinking on this. I think the list of helpful tips should be longer so I'll be trying to add to it in the coming days.
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