Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.

My writing to-do list has four novels, a poem, and several short stories on it. Right now I’m working on a novel, and splitting my guilt between going too slow, ignoring the other projects, and not giving myself enough time to breathe.

To-do lists are a double-edged sword that way. Yes, they keep me organized and allow me to quickly move to the next thing. But rarely do we add rest periods to the to-do. So it can feel like we are constantly moving onto the next project without taking time to breathe and grow between each project. And that growth is important.

For me, the mark of a truly great book is that it gives me a way of looking at the world that I’ll carry the rest of my life. One of those concepts was in Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood, where the God’s Gardeners use the term fallow to describe depressive, unproductive states. According to the Gardener’s, there was nothing inherently wrong with a fallow state – it was a necessary time to go into ourselves and regain strength and perspective.

Now, the Gardener’s had some issues with the fallow state – people didn’t get help leaving it. It was used to poo poo away some serious issues such as molestation and clinical depression. But as someone who has experienced depression my entire life, reframing it as a fallow state helped me realize there were times that I needed to wallow. There were benefits to withdrawing. Of course, that only works when you eventually come back, which is one thing the clinically depressed have difficulty doing. But the book made me realize how little room the world gives to rest and recovery. We are meant to rest for half an hour in the evening (okay, if you don’t have kids you might get a full three hours) and 1-2 days on the weekend. If you’re in Europe, you get a 1-2 week vacation to rejuvenate each year. But that doesn’t allow for a full fallow state. And especially so when we bring in the modern concept of social media and the side hustle. We’re supposed to be always producing. More content. More views. More ads. More. More. More. It’s exhausting. And even once you burn out, the question becomes, “how can you capitalize on that burnout?”

In the modern world, there is almost no time to withdraw and contemplate. To consume with intention, which is different than the binge-watching or binge-reading that IS encouraged in this world (No, I’m not bashing on fast readers).

The Pressure To Produce In The Writing World

The writing world feels no different than the rest of the world right now. There is a constant pressure to produce. I have recently let my social media “go fallow”, only updating my Bluesky on rare occasions, and that felt like a major choice. After all, how am I supposed to sell books if I am not screaming into the void? How am I supposed to make connections without liking and following? Honestly, I don’t know the answers to those questions. What I do know is that I was feeling more pressure than pleasure and several people in my writing group told me that if you don’t enjoy it, stop. Social media no longer sells books. Connections can be made elsewhere. So I stopped. And you know what? I feel better.

Beyond social media, we have the pressure to constantly write. Once you’ve been published, there’s this feeling that you should release a book a year or else you’ll lose momentum. I have several writing friends who write dozens of short stories a year and publish at least every other month. Until last year, I was one of them. Part of it was because I love writing, but if I’m honest, the more I published, the more I feared I’d “lose momentum” if I didn’t continue. My name hadn’t gained enough momentum to become easily recognizable, and I feared if I didn’t have something out at least once every two months, people would forget me. I’d be starting from zero.

No time to go fallow. No time to read and reflect. Write. Write. Write. Submit. Publish. Do it again.

Last year I slowed down. I wrote four stories. I published two. I was terrified. Was I losing my edge? It felt like my “career” was slipping out of my hands. But you know what I discovered? A lot of that pressure to publish was internal. It was the to-do list of stories that may never be written. It was a feeling of inadequacy for starting in my late thirties. Releasing all of that was terrifying, but it was also… freeing.

This year, I’ve worked on my book. Slowly. It probably won’t be ready this year. I’ve sketched out half a poem. But I’ve also taken time to read some great books. I’ve watched some videos on craft. I’ve contemplated. I’ve gone fallow – and it feels fantastic.

Does that mean when I have a book in two or three years, no one will know who I am? Maybe. But it also means that book will be the best I can write. It’s also giving me time to fall in love with writing all over again.

*Note: I am not hating on high-producers. I know there are people who can produce great work consistently, and I wish them well. I am just sharing my journey and saying, if that isn’t you, that’s okay, too.