Deep work and radical rest

Thoughts on magpies, writing habits, and storytelling in a second language.

My days these past few weeks have been all about writing, as you might have noticed.

I've written a few essays, but mostly I've been working on an old short story that I was planning on touching up, but ended up completely re-writing. Because I realized that my old writing sucked and was beyond rescue. 😂 So now, it's almost a brand new story, and almost novella-length (10 000 words). It's a better version of my original story idea, which is inspired by nordic folklore. And it's better written, since my English has improved since then. (I'll tell you more about the story next week, when I'm planning on releasing it...)

It felt really weird at first, writing fiction in a second language. I was used to writing blog posts and sales copy and that kind of stuff in English, but I had only written fiction in my native Swedish. So I first wrote these two stories in Swedish and then, slowly and with great difficulty, translated them into English. This was back in 2018.

This time around though, writing directly in English feels effortless. Even easier, and I think that's because I'm almost exclusively reading fiction in English nowadays, which is the best way I know to strengthen your vocabulary. And because I've practiced, of course. It takes time and practice to, not only be able to formulate yourself in a second language - to actually find the right words, but to also think in that language. I can't easily translate Swedish words, or sayings, or even sentence structure. There are always things lost in translation. So it's much easier to just imagine the whole thing in English from the beginning, however limiting that can feel sometimes.

The first time I did that was when writing goodnight stories for grownups for the SleepCycle app. That process included coming up with stories that were sort of culturally "neutral" and unbound by specific geography or language (because SleepCycle is used all over the world), and also writing them in English from the start. It was super difficult, and great practice.

The first story I wrote for SleepCycle, “The Stone”.

Both of my stories - The Stone and The Gardener - are in the "SleepAid" function of SleepCycle, beautifully narrated by actors. If you’re a SleepCycle user, you should be able to find them in the app. 😊 (Not sure if the feature is free or for premium users only though…)

I have not only been writing lately. I've also managed to paint a little, despite the heat and my summer laziness. A few saturdays ago, I made this magpie:

It was intended to be part of my Birds In Flight collection, but I fell in love with it and immediately wanted it up on the wall.

We have a special relationship with these birds, as there's a nest in our yard. (You can see it towards the end of this video.) So we've grown well-versed in the Ways Of The Magpie over the years since moving here. Their language, their food preferences, their daily habits and yearly routines. We do our best to make their lives easier. During winter, as they're building or improving their nest, we feed them. In spring, we help them protect their nest and nestlings by shooing away neighborhood cats and other predators. And during summer, we put out water for drinking and bathing. And let them have all the fruit and berries they want from our garden, because we can't be bothered with looking after it all. In turn, they tolerate our presence. (What sweet joy, to be tolerated by a magpie. 🖤)

Right now, the summer fledglings are in their "teenage" phase, where they're constantly exploring around the garden, pecking at everything, pulling things apart, making weird noises, and starting gang fights with other nearby magpie teenagers. It's fascinating to watch. (Not as fun to wake up to at 5 in the morning, but what can you do.)

And sometimes the neighborhood clans congregate on our lawn, with a dozen or more birds huddling together and just sort of...looking at each other. Their ways are mysterious and ever-intriguing. 🙄

So, now we're honoring our magpie neighbors with a painting in the hallway.

I'm starting to feel an itch to draw portraits again. Maybe in charcoal. That might be the topic for my next course. But I’m not quite ready yet to go back to filming and editing. I plan on spending the next month or so focusing on re-writing and releasing my two novellas. And start working on the third story in that series.

I'm currently dedicating Monday through Wednesday solely to fiction writing. It feels so good to focus on just one task per day. Instead of dividing the day up into chunks and rushing to keep up. I get up as early as I can, grab coffee, stay away from the internet and dive straight into the writing. Wearing headphones and listening to my project-specific playlists. Taking short breaks to go lie in the sun for a few minutes. I keep going until about 2 PM. Then I'm free to do whatever for the rest of the day.

This has been working wonders so far. I've really struggled this past year to stay focused and undistracted. I've lost hours every day to mindless YouTube watching or feed scrolling during work hours. This is not really a productivity issue for me - I have managed the get the stuff done anyways. But I've just felt shitty. Constantly scatter-brained, unfocused and stressed out. No matter how much I've gotten done, I haven't felt productive. Just exhausted and dissatisfied.

Isn't that weird? How you can feel more productive after three undisturbed hours of deep work than after a hectic 10-hour workday with fractured attention.

But I’ve realized the hard way that the traditional 8-hour workday is not very compatible with creative work. The brain simply can’t stay focused that long on something that cognitively demanding. Which is why you’ll read of so many prolific authors that only work 4 or 6 hours a day at most. Hustle culture damages everyone, but especially creatives. Pushing ourselves to produce as much as humanly possible every day is neither healthy nor sustainable.

It’s been a revelation these weeks, to deliberately set shorter work hours and word count goals for myself, and realize how much I’ve still managed to get done. Without feeling stressed out. And when I’ve not been working, I’ve been practicing radical rest. Letting myself be as lazy and useless as possible. Which, for me, means video gaming and reading novels.

Self-care. 😌

So that’s what I’ll do this weekend. Unless I’m not overwhelmingly inspired to draw or paint, I will probably just lounge in the sun, eat pasta and chocolate, play Mass Effect, and read my books.

I hope you're well, healthy and safe, and will get some rest this weekend as well. 🖤We'll talk again next week.

With love,

Louise

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Reading:

This great article by one of my idols, Cal Newport, on TikTok and the future of social media.

Bookwise, I just finished reading Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is the first book in an ongoing sci-fi trilogy, and wow did it capture me. From the first to the last page. This is a gem. A riveting story that managed to never get boring, not even over 600 pages.

I'm also picking up A Court of Wings And Ruin, by Sarah J. Maas again after a little break. It's a 700+ page monster of a book, and the ending of this trilogy, so I guess I just needed a breather. But now I'm back at it.

A few DNFs (Did Not Finish) as well: Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, and Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. The former annoyed the hell out of me, and the latter bored me to tears, despite me being a huge fan of Bardugo.

Watching:

Better Call Saul, which is ending next week. As in, final episode ever. 😳

I will give the new Sandman series a chance, even though I'm increasingly sceptical towards every new Netflix series nowadays. Especially if it's based on a book or comic, and especially if it's fantasy or sci-fi. I almost always get disappointed. I haven't even read the original story by Neil Gaiman and I don't know if I want to risk having it ruined by Netflix. So... we'll see. Have you watched it? What do you think?

Listening:

I’m re-discovering some of my favorite writing podcasts, among them Rachael Herron's "How Do You Write?" I loved episode 246, on why it's essential to be okay with writing crap. This is something I need to be reminded of very often. And this episode was such a perfect pep talk that I will probably download it and listen to it whenever perfectionism creeps up on me. Which is does every ten minutes or so.