I went through a rough period back in 2021 (who didn’t have a COVID blue period?). I had left my toxic job and started focusing on my craft full time. I had a lot of painful healing to do and looking back, I definitely had at least a mild depressive episode that I never sought help for.

But I’ve been better since then on the whole. There are days when this publishing miasma drags me down, but I usually keep trudging along, even keeping relatively upbeat about it all.

This week, however, I tumbled down a trench, finding myself deeper than I’ve been in… a bit. Yeah, can’t say it was my worst ever, but it’s the worst it’s been in a bit, a while.

This bad day wasn’t spurred on by anything large, specific, external. Nothing like that. No harsh rejection. No almost deal that fell apart.

Now that I’ve worked through it and am here on the other side again, I can say it was just a million little things. Those million little things that tug at us along this writing and publishing journey. Those little whispers from

rejections

silence

the umpteenth round of edits without a massive, noticeable change on a grand scale

the looming, cumbersome, nebulous, slippery, seemingly infinite task of writing, editing, querying, and hopefully publishing a novel (for any of the manuscripts currently being worked on)

Yeah, all those little things.

The little things that snag on my drive and motivation every morning like brambles on my clothes on a hike. That I can normally push through and keep going.

Until one day… it just seems pointless, delusional, and too much to bear.

Because that’s the way mental health works. We often have systems in place, tools in our toolkit that keep us humming along until something just snaps.

This isn’t the end of my story. This wasn’t the day I gave up being a writer (even though I really, really considered it).

I focused on self-care. On crying, curling into comfy clothes on comfy chairs and couches, scrubbing some dirty dishes, typing out my feelings on my typewriter (that won’t be shared here), distracting myself with harvesting virtual crops and such on my cozy farm game. You know, the usual.

It’s important to have a plan when these types of things happen, your own self-care that will help you.

First, from what I’ve learned, it’s important to acknowledge and externalize the feelings, however feels most natural and makes sense. This might be crying. It might be safely going at a punching bag. Going for a run. Screaming or singing along to screamo. Taking a long, hot shower.

After you acknowledge and externalize them, you can start processing a bit more. This might be writing or doing art. You aren’t trying to make a masterpiece here. Write down the thoughts in your head. Work through them. Acknowledge, but also challenge them. It’s understandable to be upset and frustrated by where you are at in your publishing journey (or any state in life). It’s also good to keep them in perspective and from spiraling out into catastrophic binaries. Save copies of “wins” small and large in a collection to look back on during a bad day to prove to yourself the reality of the situation: You aren’t a failure and have had some wins, no matter how small they may be.

You may use this time to accomplish something small. Pick some small task that you can complete without difficulty. This may be playing a video game (one you are comfortable with, not one that you’ve been struggling with), coloring, tidying up a small area, crafting something small and easy. You want something you know how to do and than can be completed. Even as small as it is, it reiterates they fact you are not helpless and you can complete something.

Finally, you can start to look forward. This might mean creating a to-do list to start tomorrow or redefining some of your goals. It can also focus on more positive, inspirational things like looking up inspirational speeches and facts like the ones below:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s debut manuscript went through quite the ringer

“It took nearly 130 years for this book to make it into print….It got lost in the post when he sent it to his publishers, but undeterred Conan Doyle wrote a number of chapters again from memory. These too never saw the light of day. A few years later he went on to write his first Sherlock Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet, and never looked back. His first novel was finally published in 2011 by The British Library, which had the manuscript since 2007 as part of its Conan Doyle collection.”

–“Five books that took decades to get published” by the BBC, 3 February 2015

Find the ones that mean the most to you (on a good day) and then save them for when you’re having a bad day to remind yourself this is a hard fucking journey.

Doesn’t mean the writing and publishing journey is not achievable or worthwhile…

But I think it’s worth acknowledging that the brambles sometimes become a thicket that pull you down into the abyss.

All of this is damn hard. Even when it’s beautiful.

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How do you get yourself out of the trenches when they open up?