What’s the first stage of burn-out? A sense of purposelessness — that deadly inside voice so dull drumming out the beat of it’s not enough, it’s never enough. This is the last thing you need as a freelancer, and one of the first hurtles that most self-employed hit, and break themselves on.
So how can epic fiction get you up and over the fence?
Get Out of Yourself
Any time you focus on one task for too long, you wear out the brain paths for that particular work. Studies show the human attention span works ideally in 20 minute increments. After 20 minutes? Your think box needs a change of channel and some fresh air. So what happens when you’re self-focused, project-focused, and under deadline for hours on end?
Exactly. Burn, baby, burn.
Epic fiction gives you a total and complete break with the minutiae of the left-brain analytical. Better yet, fiction’s interior struggles and epic fiction’s cosmic challenges throw the fried freelancer into an oft-forgotten-truth: There’s a lot more out there than just me and this bleeding project deadline and my mad-scientist client. Or, you know, something along those lines.
I spent two whole days agonizing over non-stop content writing for a client at one point last year. I finally threw it all in a metaphorical bin, went for a run, and crashed on the floor with Valente’s Fairyland books. I forgot myself entirely for a few hours. When I surfaced, I didn’t know where I was. But I did know I had words again in my fingers, and I knew how to string them together to write a badass blog for this client, and then some.
Get out of yourself — you were meant to live in the epic world, not try to fit it all into your little head.
Have Some Fun
Stories re-connect us to our creativity. How are you supposed to freelance — whether it be graphic design, writing, web design — if you’re disconnected from that? All right. Axe that. Stories re-connect us with out ability to play.
Play has no deadlines. Play is always perfect. Play is where we learn and enjoy the things that make us who we are — and who we are is the only place from which we can work effectively, healthily, and happily.
Play is good. Play teaches, without relegating us to cogs or demoting us to the lowly serf of utilitarian productivity. Play is part of fiction, and fiction connects us to our ability to empathize, learn, and relate to ourselves and others.
Have some fun. Read some epic fiction.
And finally…
…some epic fiction is really bad.
Have a Laugh, Take a Break
Second most deadly deal for you freelancing freedom-fighters: Seriousness. Perfectionism. PARALYSIS. I run into this bloke on a regular turn-table basis. Getting stuck in my head, and in a whirl around a project or client without a break, turns me into a compulsive freak for perfection — and it is all based on the deadly serious.
No laughs, guys. No laughs.
Well, epic fiction: You can be horrid to high heaven. You can make no sense. You can sometimes include wizards in speedos, heinous plot-twists, and long-lost-impossible-brothers-with-…is it a secret weapon to save the world again? YES! Sometimes.
When I was growing up, my dad had rather a thing for picking family movies. He had a thing, which was also a talent for picking the very worst film you had ever set eyes on. One such shiner included dialogue written by what must have an illiterate wookiee from his marooned bark in the North Pole. It was so bad, we laughed for days.
It’s good to be bad sometimes. In less paradoxical prose, it’s good to laugh and not worry about making sense. It’s good to laugh at yourself.
Working for yourself often looks like freedom at first. It isn’t if you don’t give yourself a break, disengage, and get epic. If you’re the sort that really just can’t find a tooth to sink into epic fiction, try a story anyhow.
Our sense of well-being and ability to work is directly proportional to our sense of purpose.
We freelancers are free-folk, if we give ourselves the break, the laugh…and the epic fiction. Purpose doesn’t come from being productive. Purpose comes from having a sense of something great, receiving the cool beans of the universe, and doing what we love.
Next time you’re 8 hours in and feeling like a mole-in-a-mountain, why not try taking a time-out for the epic?
Some epic fiction recommendations if you’re at a loss:
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (always thought this was a snorter)
Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia McKillip
Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones
The Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
The Girl Who…Fairyland Trio by Catheryne Valente
The Runelords by David Farland
Disclaimer: Not all titles recommended for stellar literary merit. Some, as noted, snorters. But that’s the point.
C.J. Williams 