Writers and Stress
Brian Brennan, an award-winning and best-selling author, keeps his writing stress to a minimum, “I manage to avoid stress in my writing life. I try not to take on too much work at any given time, only accept deadlines that I can manage comfortably, and only deal with editors and publishers that I respect and trust. I used to work full-time as a journalist, and there was considerably more stress involved with that job. These days, it’s “serenity now” all the way.”
Barb Howard, multi-published author and the winner of the Writer’s Guild of Alberta’s 2009 Howard O’Hagan Award for short story, shares her writer stress, “For me, writing isn’t stressful - it’s not writing that gives me chest pain. The obvious solution is to write every day, but other aspects of my life are always getting in the way. I try to de-stress by grabbing moments (at work, in traffic, at the grocery store) to mentally develop characters or scenes so that when the time to write finally arrives, I use it efficiently. The other thing I do is get a lot of outdoor exercise which, I know, uses up valuable writing time but has a huge pay off in that it helps me focus and makes me feel less like a mole when I work in my basement office. I used to stress about whether everyone would “like” my published work. Now I remind myself that I’m not writing to please everyone. I just do the best job I can and leave it at that.”