Creative writing tired

What do you do when you just don’t feel like writing? You know you should be writing, but when you think about actually doing it, you start thinking about all the other things you’d rather do (e.g. play another round of Candy Crush, scroll mindlessly through Facebook, eat Elmer’s glue).

Tiredness is something I know and understand. I have to constantly push myself, so I know that fifth-wind feeling well. @Garball hits the nail on the head when he mentions tunnel vision. Shit, do I know that one. I think of it as a drowning man holding on to a log.

Being somebody who lives their life on their fourth or fifth wind, being physically tired and lack of sleep are something that you easily get used to. When I get that tired, my brain gets tunnel vision. I can only concentrate on one thing at time or nothing at all. It is the mental exhaustion that gets the best of you.

One way to handle this is to say to yourself, “Just do the work, darn it! Push through. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to write. Do it anyway!” While this approach does work sometimes, it can also develop an inner resentment against your work that can actually lead you to be even more unproductive later on.