Stress Gets Heavy! by DL Larson

If you're feeling a bit overwhelmed with juggling all your commitments, consider the story below. I don't know the author, but I wanted to share it with you anyway.

A young woman walked around the room while leading a stress management class. She raised a glass of water and everyone figured she would ask the question, 'half full or half empty?' She fooled them and instead asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?"

Answers ranged from 8 ounces to 20 ounces.

She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance for me. In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes." She continued, "and that's the way it is with stress. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on."

"As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for awhile and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden, holding stress longer and better each time practiced. So, as early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down. Don't carry them through the evening and into the night. Pick them up tomorrow."

"Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them go for the moment. Relax! Pick them up later after you've rested. Life is short. Enjoy some stress-free time."

So my thought for today is to relax a bit! Enjoy the beautiful weather with family and friends, this evening! I plan to dine with girlfriends tonight! I plan to leave my stress at home!

If your burdens are anything like mine, they will still be where you placed them when you retreave them! Hopefully, they won't be quite so heavy!

Til next time ~

DL Larson

More Psych 101 for Writers, Readers, Characters

Once again Professor Walker guides you through what Pavlov's Dog never did learn....

Q#3 -- How does 'health and stress' play a role in fiction writing?

Answer: Health and stress are like chicken and egg, hand and glove as one is so closely linked with the other. The health of the author and the reader are crucial to the process. Lose your health and the first interest to go is sex followed by reading. Laugh track here. Seriously, a loss of the ability to concentrate, focus, draw on memory is devastating to the creative process and reading is a creative process as well as writing. Too much stress bad things result all round. Too little stress...well isn't it like blood pressure and so many things?

Everything in moderation. So health and stress are crucial to reading and writing, and inside the story, characters also battle health issues and stress at every turn. In fact, the stress level for the typical fictional person would likely kill any real human being. Imagine being at the stress level of an Indiana Jones for a day.

The stress level and problems an author creates to plague his creation are crucial to a story, because in essence every working story is a war. One side wants X, side two wants Y, and they stand in one another's way (goal). It is stressful to chase a killer, to race toward a goal, to attempt to achieve but the brass ring is just out of reach.

The old admonition is to get your character up a tree, then soak him with rain, pelt him with rocks, hit the limb he's on with lightning, have the limb careen to the earth where you've placed a family of bears or cannibals who're awaiting the poor sap. Any stress in the cartoon version of Tarzan? Disney films even for children have to carry conflict, else no story. Conflict and overcoming conflict is the essence of story.

Stress, conflict, tension...the high wire upon which the story character walks and fails or prevails. It's the job of the author to establish bedrock characteristics (DNA) in a Tom, Dick, or Harry, and then to challenge these rock-hard, supposedly unshakable traits. You can't let a character rest in a state of bliss (not for long anyway). Stress and health play a major role in the creative process indeed.

I have STRESSED out a lot of my readers and writers with the twists and turns in some fifty ODD novels over the years, and frankly that is my job, and I enjoy doing it but it is still stressful, so I gotta get away from the writiing when I can and get off my duff and get some exercise other than traveling to the refrigerator!

Find me dealing with The Curse of the Titanic, a journal on the writing of my latest novel at Dirty Deeds - Advice (google it).  For more writing help visit Miranda and I at Write Aide