Humans Do Some Really Stupid Things

More specifically, writers are sometimes pretty dang dumb. 
Take me, for example. A couple weeks ago, until about two days before today, I was 98% sure I would never write anything worth reading ever again. 

Have any of you experienced a writing crash? I had just wrapped up a series of three books, three books with characters I loved and hated and cried over. I'd given up on this series and hated it, then returned and loved it even more. I learned, writing these books. I grew up with these characters. So, once I put that period on the last sentence, I didn't know what to do. How to function. How to leave them.

I had to find a new story, obviously, but how? Who to follow on their adventure next? I began to feel physically sick and afraid, frantically trying to gouge great story ideas out of my brain. I needed to write. Needed to. I get mentally depressed if I don't, and I thought, well, no one will want to keep contracting me because I won't have anything left to write. 

For some reason, I thought storytelling was a thing that could be exhausted like a gas tank. So I drew the cartoon above. Like writing, drawing ekes out my emotions and puts them somewhere else and boom--my head cleared. I looked at the drawing and thought how STUPID I was being. Of course I wasn't done! I would never be done! I was writing a scholarship essay at the time, and my wording jumped from "eh" to "AWARD HER MONEY THIS INSTANT." Then I thought of what would happen if King Arthur was real and his descendants were still around and kicking and were supposed to be keeping all things macabre and mystical in check, and if said descendant was really unimpressed with all things magical and just wanted to go to culinary school instead of being king? Weird, I know, but I was intrigued.

So, if you're experiencing writer's crash, do not fret. You are AMAZING and IMAGINATIVE and you just need to loosen the reigns a bit instead of surging into panic mode. You got this. Chill. Read a book. Draw. Sing. Let the ideas flow, because oh, ideas will come. Do. Not. Freak. Out.  
  
I just like to remember this Thomas Edison quote that is stuck to my closet door at home: "If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves." I don't always believe it, but at least it perks me up and sets me on my game. :)