I discussed it here intermittently all summer and any poor bastard/bastardess that crossed my path in the terrene world couldn’t get me to shut up about it. I was suffering from writer burnout.
I didn’t want to write about Italy. I didn’t want to write about Spain. I didn’t want to write about Spain’s topless beaches. And I really didn’t want to write about writer burnout. But I sucked it up and wrote anyway, because I’m a professional (at least that’s what I tell people).
The problem was an extended interval (like going on two years) of over-work and under-sleep, both of which were exclusively my fault. Each year my sleeping skills drop a little and it’s really starting to harsh my waking mellow. In addition to that deficiency, I was formerly loathe to say ‘no’ to any writing job no matter how time consuming, low paying and not getting me any nearer to meeting Natalie Portman it may have been. I’ve recently taken measures to rectify two of those three predicaments.
I’ve moved back to my cherished hometown of Minneapolis, which incidentally made a good showing earlier this week at the dangerously arbitrary “America’s Favorite Cities” poll conducted by CNN and Travel + Leisure. This brilliant scheme has allowed me to start a regimen where I sleep in the same bed every night. Furthermore, there are no Italian Noise-Making World Champions in my building doing training sessions at midnight, three, five and seven in the morning. Nor are there any insomniac Romanian carpet-whackers, toiling away with their rhythmic, gun-shot sounding pounding just before 7am every Saturday.
I also took a work break (of sorts, I never actually stop working, I’m sick people), which when combined with the sudden, lavish eight hours of sleep I was averaging per night cured me of my dreaded writer burnout with miraculous speed.
Now I’m back to my familiar Pure Joy writing form, where I furiously type all day, I lay awake at night writing and editing in my head (including in my dreams on certain occasions e.g. “Hey Natalie, which word is funnier, ‘ca-ca’ or ‘doo-doo’?”) and wake up without fail at 7.30am each day with no chance of going back to sleep, because I’m so damn excited to write.
Unfortunately, this development will have no immediate impact on ya’ll, my rapturous groupies, because all that ferocious writing energy – apart from this minute – is being wholly devoted to a massive, panicky, three week, gadget review project for a MSN shopping guide to be online the week before Thanksgiving. Next to travel and girls, writing about gadgets is my favorite kind of writing. And it doesn’t hurt that MSN pays well and promptly enough for me to actually have a merry Christmas this year, rather than a “It’s a Wonderful Life” Christmas, the director’s cut where the guardian angel gets waylaid in Vegas, I can’t afford to buy myself soup, much less sushi and I’m disowned by family and friends for giving out ‘recycled can gift packs’ for presents.
The downside is that I have a whole new sleep deprivation problem. Whether I go to bed at 10pm sober or at 2am with two bottles of wine in me, I’m up at the stroke of 7.30am. When I worked at the Federal Reserve Bank, if not for my flimsy dedication and a terrifyingly loud alarm clock, I couldn’t be coaxed out of bed until 11am. Now, even after a virtually sleepless 27 hour flight from Romania, I can’t sleep past 9.30. In truth, I’m starting to get a little exhausted again which, as we already know, is a one-way ticket back to “National Lampoon’s Writer Burnout Vacation”. Should that occur, please ignore my recycling of jokes from the writer burnout posts from this summer. And for those of you just joining us from my continuing Burma series over at Gadling, it’s all brand new material. Really, I don’t know where I come up with it.
Question of the day: have you ever loved your work so much it actually kept you up at night?
Please direct your answers and (for my Fed readers) wretchedly jealous hate mail to my comments section.
PS – Call me, Natalie.
I have editing dreams constantly–it’s maddening, but I’m not sure if it’s a byproduct of loving my job.
I can tell when I’m getting near the end of a project when I spend all my sleeping hours reworking the same two paragraphs, checking for fit and bad line breaks, making sure it’s hyphens–not slashes–after area codes, tweaking phrases to get the word count just so. If only I were so damn diligent in my waking life.
And I assume you’ve seen the Wes Anderson short that starts Darjeeling Limited? So hot, and I’m saying that as a girl.
Usually when my work keeps me up at night it’s because I don’t like it and I’m worried about it, not because I love it … although I suppose when I was rewriting the Denver Fire Code and had waking dreams about it, that was close to being kept awake from loving my work.
If you really want to attract the attention of your Natalie, do what others have done before you, murder a president. I will not tell you which, but, please, don’t miss. And Natalie will be so loving and sweet, when she comes to see you, once in her lifetime, in Florence. I mean the one in Colorado, what did you understand!
Lief, Leaf, Life, geez, just got your name down and now you want us to call you Natalie; ok, whatever, but hope you start sleeping well sometime soon. Seriously tho’, you know you are a much better writer when you have a topic to rant or whine about, so being sleep deprived should fuel your word output.
wes is a poof, and the short sucks the big one
Zora – I may have been the first person to download that film. Super hot. But it’s come out now that poor Natalie regrets doing the scene and suggests she was pressured into doing it. Wes just earned a spot on my “Kick in the ‘Nads List” if I ever seen him.
Amanda – you get to write about some interesting stuff. I say that as I try to flesh out 800 words comparing headphones.
Gemma – So passé. If I want Natalie’s attention I’m clearly going to have to stalk her or something. At least that way I get to have actual interaction with her (through her lawyer).
Maureen – you know it sister. I’m on the thinnest hair trigger lately. Why just this morning I was at brunch and the people at the next table had brought along their little devil spawn, who was shrieking at a volume and pitch that was reactivating my hangover from two days earlier. This went on and on and other than the occasional ‘shhhh’ from the parents, they did nothing to stop this auditory mugging. I mused out loud about how illegal it might be to duct tape a kid’s mouth shut, if by duct taping him I would save his life from incensed diners. Finally, at one point all three of us were looking over at this table in disgust and the dad looked up and caught my eye just as I was mouthing ‘what the f*ck…’ in slow motion like in that scene from Superbad. They sensed they were near an incident and ushered the kid out of the restaurant. Don’t mess with me at brunch jackhole.