THE SOLARIUM

Sometimes, writing is going to feel like wearing an itchy sweater.

You got that sweater because you love it. You look great in it. You post a thousand pictures of yourself in the sweater. You tell all your friends and family about your amazing sweater. You are, frankly, kind of insufferable about this sweater.

But it itches.

This fantastic, gorgeous sweater that you adore is an absolute bitch to wear. Just the thought of putting it in on in the morning makes you want to die. So you reach for a boring hoodie instead.

You might tell yourself, “It’s colder in the evening, anyway. Maybe I’ll try the sweater then?” You’re a filthy liar. Why would you put on sweater at night when it’s been a long day and your comfiest pajamas are right there?

You keep waiting for there to be a perfect moment where just the thought of wearing the sweater excites you. Sometimes, those moments come. You throw that sweater on, and everything is perfect. You don’t feel the itchiness at all–everything has melted away but the joy of wearing your favorite sweater in the world.

But you can’t wear the sweater all the time. You take it off eventually, and the next time you think about putting it on, you remember how badly it itches.

You don’t want to wear it unless you know it’ll feel perfect, but you don’t want to spend your life in boring hoodies, either.

Sometimes, wearing the sweater will kind of suck.

You can do it anyway.

Once you stop expecting to achieve sweater nirvana every time you put it on, you realize that being itchy isn’t the worst thing in the world. You can deal with a little itchiness in your life–fifteen minutes, half an hour, maybe even an hour a day. Once you’ve put the sweater on, your skin gets used to it, and the irritation fades.

You just feel warm.

***

I chose to write about my sweater theory today to remind myself why I write: because I love it.

It’s a much-needed reminder after the frantic past few weeks I’ve had, crammed with final projects for class and lofty goals I’ve set for myself, all coming on the heels of NaNoWriMo.

I needed a couple days to decompress, but it was hard to give myself that permission. I was worried that if I let myself be less productive, even for a single day, I’d lose my groove entirely and never be able to get back into it.

I’d been wearing the sweater for so long, I couldn’t feel the itch at all. That would change once I took it off.

But I had to.

On Wednesday, I finished putting together my ebook “negative first edition” of Amethyst the Assassin. I plan to make a separate post about that process soon.

It was an achievement I was proud of, but finishing it left me with a profound sense of emptiness, a gaping “what now?”

It’s not that I don’t have other projects to work on, or even that there isn’t more to be done with ATA itself (the negative first edition is part one of a yet-unfinished, three-part novel), but once the high of sending newly minted epubs to friends and family wore off, I crashed hard.

I was sick the next day, which took some of the pressure of “deciding” to take a break out of my hands. I could barely keep my head up at work¹ and fell into bed still wearing my winter coat.

I decided I would use Friday and the weekend to rest and recover, then come back strong on Monday.

Will it be hard getting back into the swing of things after taking a break? Probably. The sweater is going to itch, but I wear it because I love it.

I’m taking it easy this next week, just working on the (still top-secret!) analytical project I mentioned in last week’s “Constellations” post and doing a bit of original writing every day.

I’ll let you know how it goes on the other side!

1. For anyone concerned, it wasn’t anything contagious. I didn’t have a fever or any kind of stomach or respiratory symptoms, just a terrible headache, dizziness, and exhaustion, all of which could have been the result of stress, lack of sleep the night before, starting new medication earlier in the week, and not eating/hydrating well. ↩︎