IWSG: How Long-Term Fatigue Affected My Writing

I knew something was wrong when I stopped dreaming. 

It started over a year ago when I decided it best to write in the evenings after everyone had gone to bed. The logic that supported my decision was sound. After all, it was the only time the house was quite, distractions drawn to a minimum, and interruptions were just about nil. The only thing I didn't take into consideration was me, but I'll get back to that later. So every night, as the moon rose into the sky, I wrote my little heart out. My head rarely found a pillow before midnight but that was fine by me, I saw progress between the pages of my manuscript and the late nights were worth it. Several months went by, my manuscript was in the hands of my editor, and in this down time I focused on blogging, facebook, twitter and started other writing projects. 

It didn't take long before I hijacked my sleep cycle and gave my circadian rhythm the big ole F.U. After that, I was crashing to bed around 2am and waking back up at 7am. By now, my body was getting a little irritated with me and started sending me messages. It was clear I was being told to stop being an idiot and get more sleep. Did I listen? Of course not. 'I can handle it!' I said. Turns out, not only was I not able to 'handle it,' but my body did not like being ignored and it proceeded to kick my butt until I listened. The effects were varied and not pretty. Here's what followed:

I started having difficulties concentrating on any particular task. 

My run times on the race track regressed. 

I gained weight.

I felt tired. All. The. Damn. Time. 

I procrastinated. A lot.

My muse, due to lack of sleep, packed up his shit and split. 

Crappy posts that should have take me hours to write, took me days to finish. 

You know how aggravating it is to have ideas pop into your head just as you're about to fall asleep? Well not having any ideas come to you is worse. The pad of paper on my night stand stayed blank for months and the magic of writing was slipping through my tired little fingers. 

My writing suffered. 

I started feeling depressed. 

And then I stopped dreaming. Or maybe I was no longer able to remember my dreams. Before, I was someone who dreamt all the time and could recall my dreams or at least fragments of them. And let me tell you, that was fun because I have the craziest, wildest, dancing-with-blue-whales dreams . . . or at least I used to. 

In the end, I lost my joy for writing. 

What started out as a reasonable shift in my schedule to gain more writing time, turned into six months of the most counterproductive writing I've ever struggled through. And the thing is, I knew what I was doing was stupid but I took that risk regardless. We always know, deep down don't we? Now, I've got a mess to clean up before I start having some serious health issues to deal with. Here's the update:

Two weeks ago I started getting to bed no later than midnight, no matter what.

I cut back on my blogging and other social media time. Sorry in advance if I haven't gotten to your blogs. I will though, soon. (: 

Last week I made awesome progress during running practice. It felt good to enjoy practices again. 

I'm still waiting for my muse to come back. I think he's still mad at me. And yes, my muse is a guy. A hot, sexy, sensitive, intelligent, imaginary guy. *le sigh*

Still taking me crazy amounts of time to write the simplest things, but at least I'm starting to feel the quality of my writing improve. 

So it seems I've decided to stop being a total idiot, and guess what? Last night, I had the strangest dream . . . (:

I hope those of you who are having similar issues find a way to make the necessary adjustments and get back onto a better sleep cycle. People don't realize how important sleep is to your health. Or maybe you do but you're not listening. If that's the case, then let this be the moment you unplug your ears and start listening to your body. Trust me, you're worth it and so is your writing.

Let's stop being idiots together. (:

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A big thank you to our host, Alex Cavanaugh and his amazing IWSG co-hosts this month. If you would like to know more about this awesome group of writers, click HERE or click the Insecure Writers Support Group icon at the top of my right side bar.