Atrophy of the Writing Muscle
Sorry I know I said that I wanted to write less about writing but here's a short post about writing 💪
Last November I declared that I was taking a break from writing until at least the end of the year. The year is now ended, we’re in 2025 (weird!), and I must therefore decide what to do.
The truth is, the break has felt nice. I’m sort of unhappy about this. Surely the mark of a True Writer™️ is that he cannot help himself; he must write; to not write would be to not exist, or worse, to not think. But it turns out that I absolutely can spend several weeks not writing (much). In the last couple of months I had plenty of other projects and commitments to worry about. I still have all of them, in fact. I don’t really want to re-add the weekly source of stress of writing a blog post on top of it all.
Making matters worse is that I now feel worse at writing than I felt last year. Some of my side projects are writing-based,1 and when I tried to finally get started on them I found the process painful and slow. I suppose that’s not too surprising. Maybe a metaphor with exercises and muscles is apt: I have injured my “writing muscle” from writing too much, unsustainably, leading to burnout. And now, as I rest and recover, that writing muscle slowly atrophies. The only cure is to get back to writing, but in a way that is sustainable and won’t lead to injury.
I think that’s normal. There are a number of cartoonists in my IRL circles and it seems common for them to basically stop creating anything right after they complete a major project such as a book. Creativity works like that, for whatever reason.
This short post can be viewed as a first attempt at getting back in shape. I feel I’ll need to take it slow, though. And finish some of my other writing-based projects before I get back to regular blogging. (My readers are soon to learn a lot about the history of one particular tropical fruit.)
So yes, I still write, but in a totally different way than by having a weekly blog. Perhaps 2025 will be the year where most of my writing will be for various publication, actually.
Good call on taking a break. I appreciate the honesty here.
Muscles need different things at different times: stretching, massaging, ice packs, perhaps a sauna. Perhaps this "lighter weights, more reps" approach will help.
The other possibbility involves seasonal light. Eyestrain, from temperatures or dry air, have both mental and physical effects. Perhaps get your vision checked or change the way lights in your writing space are aligned.
Patience, either way. The year is young.
This is so true about writing.