More Than Words
November 18, 2019

Looking back at this year's posts so far, I spent a lot of my time writing about
the craft of writing and little else. So for once, I'm going to break my endless
chant of "Write, Submit, Repeat" to consider some non-writing aspects of the
writing life.

It's easy to get so wrapped up in the identity of being a "writer" that you
forget the other parts of yourself. Don't neglect them. I mean things such as
taking care of yourself. Taking care of your house, your debts and bills, your
relationships.

Writing is a sedentary and sometimes lonely pursuit. Writers spend a lot of time
just sitting, while staring at a blank page can be terrifying in its own way.
Make sure to take care of yourself: get up from your chair every hour or so and
stretch. Go out for a walk (or better yet, a jog) every day. The state of your
body has an impact on the state of your mind, and keeping yourself in shape will
help keep your mind sharp. Taking care of yourself also means being aware of
things like drinking too much and doing drugs. Either may make you feel good in
the short term, but both are fatal to any sort of writing career.

Don't neglect the things around you. The kitchen needs to be cleaned regularly
to prevent bugs from taking over. If you plan to go out in public, you need
clean clothes. The car needs gas and oil changes if you want to be able to use
it to do things such as getting groceries to feed yourself. It's easy to get so
focused on writing that you let things slip, let little things pile up until
they become so big you have to drop everything--including writing--to deal with
them. (I speak from bitter experience here.) Better to get in a few less words
on a particular day to get your teeth cleaned than to be a couple of pages ahead
at the end of the quarter and in need of a root canal.

Be sure to take care of yourself financially, too. Read up on how taxes work for
freelancers, or if you have a steady job, how your writing income affects your
taxes. If you're going to claim writing expenses, be sure to keep good records
and receipts in case of an audit. Take some part (I'd suggest ten percent) of
all the money that comes into your life, writing or otherwise, and use it to
create an emergency fund. Even a tiny emergency fund can be helpful; in a pinch,
a hundred bucks is enough to buy groceries or gas to get you to and from work.

Finally, don't forget to take care of your relationships--to your loved ones, to
your friends, to whatever deity you believe in. Be a good partner, a good
friend, a good person. Spend time with the ones you love, even if that means
taking an evening off every now and then. Remember that writing is what you do,
but that it's not everything you are.

(c) 2019 by Andrew Gudgel 
email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com