Other creative works, though, necessitate the slow, consistent application of effort and energy over time if you want to avoid converting desirable matter into unpalatable char.

The distinction between these categories of work is partially down to the ingredients used (some conceptions are more suitable for extended-duration effort, while others are ideally served essentially raw), but is also related to what kind of output we’re hoping to achieve and the intended purpose of the final product.

A book is distinct from an essay not just in its word-count, but also in the sprawl, scope, and number of connections it contains: there’s typically more complexity in a book, and that means conceiving of, refining, and tending to a wider variety of theses, entangled ideas, and intentionally arranged, pre-packaged takeaways.

An essay can also contain multitudes but its richness will tend to be in service to just a few entwined points; any more than that tends to muddle an otherwise clear and focused message.

Switching between these two stances can be tricky: cranking up the heat from simmer to sear requires time and energy, and experience is required to accurately determine when things have cooled down enough so that we don’t accidentally burn a simmerable work.

I find it helps to practice this transition between creative states so that I have a better sense of when I’ve reached the optimal conditions for one type of work or the other; I can then set aside time for different sorts of projects when I’m primed for them, while also having the option of turning the dial if I’m feeling misaligned with something I’d like to work on.

It’s an imperfect equilibrium, though, and if you’re not accustomed to keeping track of and managing your creative temperature, you can end up with a lot of dangerously undercooked and inedibly burnt creations in the process of learning to strike this balance.

1. I unintentionally stopped posting things on Instagram back in early October, and from there just kept forgetting that the network even existed. And I’d love to say it was a liberating, lovely experience, but the truth is I truly just didn’t even think about it, except to periodically realize I hadn’t thought about it in a while, and that I didn’t feel anything of note about that realization.
   • This is increasingly my stance toward most of the networks I’m on, and I’m torn about whether I want some new, useful-and-fun social competitor to emerge from the current paradigm (actively on-fire wreckage on one end, still-glossy embryonic offerings on the other), or if maybe it’s time to move on to some other method of stumbling-across and engaging-with unfamiliar people and concepts.
2. Alongside that new book I’m writing, I’m in the process of recording and re-recording some of my older books (for audiobook purposes), and it’s been both horrifying (that somehow all these typos made it through the editing process) and gratifying (most of my ideas and approaches to sharing them aren’t as superficial and muddled as I’d worried).
3. We’re living through a truly tumultuous period of politics and international happenings, and I earnestly believe it’s more important than ever that we’re aware of what’s happening while also being able to disconnect our psychological batteries from our ingestion of the information we require to be informed civic participants.
   • In other words: be aware of how you’re responding to the barrage of daily (often quite grim) information, take time away from the news when you need to (read fiction!), step away from horse-race reporting and “breaking news”-oriented broadcasts (maybe forever) and replace them with colder, intensely boring recitations of facts and figures, and don’t forget to backfill your understanding by reading up on history, science, unfamiliar industries and trades, etc.
4. Something I’m trying to remind myself of for the new year is that I have more fun, and my habits and work are a lot more sustainable (my output higher-quality—folks seeming to enjoy it more, too) when I focus on being as refined a version of myself as I can be (as opposed to leaning on suppositions about how I’m supposed to do things, based on other peoples’ priorities, skills, experiences, etc).
   • There will always be moments in which I question this and start wondering if leaning a bit toward the “smart” way of doing things might be prudent, but I almost always realize (after such a lean) it was a mistake, hurling myself bodily back toward where I was in order to save my work and well-being.
5. Most good habits have give to them, which helps them remain flexible as your lifestyle and needs change, while still serving as a sort of backbone for everything else you do.
   • That malleability also means they’re more likely to bounce back into place after a period (short or long-ish) of stepping away from them. This is worth keeping in mind during a period in which many of us attempt to deploy new, hopefully positive habits for the new year, despite such periods also being riddled with peculiarities and unusual situations (that are otherwise prone to kill fresh habits before they come of age).

I’m personally trying something new in these final, waning days of 2023: I’m taking a whole week off, intending to spend that time in calm, quiet reflection, and to work on the new book I’m writing.

(Which in practice means I’ll probably manage a little calmness and some amount of writing, but will mostly accomplish a bunch of other things that pop-up and demand my attention, instead.)

This “taking time off” thing isn’t easy for me, and I haven’t taken a full week off in…maybe ever?

I’ve taken a few days here and there in recent years, but even those days have usually been planned for periods in which I don’t have any significant work to do, anyway, and in most cases I just front-loaded the work so that I performed all the same labor, I just redistributed it so that I was overworked leading up to a brief period of being underworked.

So we’ll see how this goes; I’ve moved a few things around to account for this shift, but I’m trying to defy my tendency to just chronologically redistribute my labor instead of taking real-deal time for myself, and hoping against hope that folks on the receiving end of my work aren’t too annoyed or put-off by this effort.

In other news, I’ve soft-launched a little online store that I’m planning to build-out and evolve in the coming year.

The goal is to make this my central, online hub for the many things I currently make, while also serving as fresh soil for new, weird, pop-up projects I can then display on the same e-shelves.

My books will continue to be available everywhere, but this home base has the advantage of costing me less to operate: there’s a relatively small payment processing fee on every sale, but I won’t have to pay the additional platform fees (10%+) most other online stores charge.

The downside of this approach is that the platform I’m using (a new-ish Shopify competitor that gave me a deal because of that new-ness) is still pretty green, kind of ugly, and has required (and will probably continue to necessitate) a fair bit of effort to whip into suitable shape.

The upside is that it seems to do all the things I need it to do and should allow me to offer physical goods as well as digital ones (alongside those aforementioned “not bleeding me dry, monetarily” benefits).

(Speaking of which: if I were to make signed paperback copies of my books available on this little shop of mine, would you be interested? That’s one of the initial, next-step categories of things I’m considering popping up there, alongside possibly some artwork, zines, and similarly out-there (but fun for me) goods.)

So that effort, alongside some other (grinding, tedious, not-fun) platform-consolidation and recalibration reshuffling I’ve been doing in the background, should help me do more of the work I’d like to be doing this upcoming year, in terms of making and sharing things—which lines up with my philosophy of optimizing for more options whenever possible.

That may or may not be how things turn out, but sometimes all you can do is till the soil, plant the seeds, and hope for the best.