No. 73: It’s Supposed to Be a Challenge!

The Antidote to Burnout

I’m at a crossroads of abundance in my career.

I just came off three very quiet years of working exclusively on YOUNG WORLD, a book I took my time on because it was an utter reinvention — not just of my persona as an author, but my style, genre, and my idea of what a novel is. There’s nothing really comparable to YOUNG WORLD out there, because it’s my own soul’s Frankenstein, a Noah’s Ark that I chased from my dreams through the rabbit holes of madness to somehow force into fruition.

But it’s done — or close to done, as we’re in the middle of wrangling the printed proof — and all that stamina and energy that I built working on this behemoth of a book is siphoning off to new lanes of opportunity.

First, a new fantasy series, which I’ve been having a blast writing and will bring me back to the world of fairy tales.

Then, a reboot of THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD & EVIL series, only as a 10-year, full program of epic graphic novels (we just locked the artist, who is an exponential talent).

Then the new podcast with Victoria that’s been an unexpected catharsis… plus this diary where I get to confess to you every week… and a couple other fun things I’m doing this fall which I’ll soon tell you about…

I’m in a period of joyful play and momentum and optimism that feels like a first in my 12+ year writing career.

Except… I’m also burned out.

I admitted it to myself this morning, 72 hours after turning in the YOUNG WORLD proof to Random House, a 15-pound monster that I lugged on vacation to London and spent every spare minute, in trains, taxis, planes marking up. Every time my partner nipped out to the store to buy water or dental floss, out came the damn brick of paper. But it mattered — I had to get every pixel right, including the 200+ art and design elements, and my fascist obsession with this book could not relent, even on my supposed break.

On my return, I dropped off the finished proof — along with blood, sweat, and tears buried inside it. And the firm belief that I took it as far as I could.

But now…

The E light is flashing.

I’m out of gas.

My mind wants to get started on the next part of the fantasy book… the edits to the graphic novel… but my body’s just cooked.

I sat and stared at clouds most of the morning, then watched Wimbledon and rooted against Djokovic (which I do every year, like every Federer fan, a spite he answers with equally spiteful victory). No writing was done. Nor the next day or the next.

I berated myself internally for this. I think of myself as a machine and indefatigable and a supernova of motivation that never runs out of heat… mainly because this is how I got through school… sublimating all unquenchable closeted desires into overachievement…

But this time, no matter how much I yanked on my own reins — nothing.

Then I saw something watching Wimbledon.

Emma Navarro was playing her third-round match, an absolute dogfight against an injured opponent, and during a break in the action, she looked up at her coach, who said something so startling that I wrote it down:

“This is hard. It’s supposed to be a challenge.”

Ding. Ding. Ding.

In a flash, my own motivation started seeping back.

By the next morning, I was ready to work.

It’s supposed to be a challenge.

What was in those simple words?

Maybe because once you’ve established yourself as a writer, there is an assumption that productivity and making great work is the given. The automatic default. You forget the scrappiness of those early days, the far-away ambitions of publication and the trench warfare of trying to get that vision in your body and mind onto a blank page. In that nascent stage, there’s no thought to potential success in the same way that you don’t actually think you’ll win the lottery when you buy a lottery ticket. You’re just playing the game.

Except somewhere along the way, you forget that mindset.

Instead, you assume the magic is always there, like one of those bottomless bowls of food in fairy tales. Like your soul is an unrelenting golden goose.

It’s supposed to be a challenge.

Of course it is! Writing at an elite level is hard, improbable, impossible. Of course you’re going to get burned out and feel like you’re on fumes and need that battery of inspiration to run down to the last dregs of gas in the tank before you start panicking and hunting for a Shell station.

Sadhguru, an Indian yogi says: The only worthwhile quality of art comes from a ratio of 2/3 intake to 1/3 expression.

My ratio was off. Too much output. Not enough input.

An expectation that I was as smooth and relentless as an AI bot, able to drive right through any human vagaries. Writing as machinery.

But then those words from a sports coach, just in time.

It’s supposed to be a challenge.

Permission to be human. Instead of whining or lamenting or getting on myself… a celebration of the difficulty of the task.

And suddenly, I’m layering the phrase onto everything else in my life.

Nurturing a relationship.

Finding balance.

Staying healthy.

Keeping your mind clear and yourself authentic.

It’s supposed to be a challenge.

All of it.

You can’t complain when it’s meant to be hard. When the hardness of it is what makes the experience fulfilling.

Ah. Now I get it.

It’s not just supposed to be a challenge. You might not even win!

So buck up and enjoy the fight, because the outcome isn’t guaranteed.

(Emma went on to win the match.)

Wimbledon looms large in my head at the moment because I just got back from going there, a lifelong dream that finally came true — only on a 95 degree heat wave day in London that had players puking and spectators wrapping their heads turban-style in ice towels. Still, there was nothing like it: the lushness of the grounds, the intimacy of Centre Court, the strawberries and cream… (“If Djokovic loses, we’ll do a second round of strawberries,” I promised my partner so he’d join me in rooting against him.)

The match I’m thinking of now is one between Aryna Sabalenka, the World #1 and absolute dragon of firepower, who bludgeons you off the court… and 37 year-old Laura Siegmund from Germany, who by her own admission, is a practitioner of the dark arts. Siegmund purposefully delays the game, drop shots you to death, takes random 10-minute toilet breaks, and intends to drive you to Arkham asylum. And on this day, she nearly imploded Sabalenka’s brain, who after losing the first set, looked up at her box, as if to say: “I don’t care if I lose. Get me away from this woman.”

But somehow after 3.5 hours, Sabalenka solved the Siegmund riddle and advanced to the next round. In press, she said something curious that stayed with me. When asked how she found her way, she answered: “Any other day, I lose. But this is Wimbledon. I told myself, where else would I rather be? So I have to find a way.”

It’s supposed to be a challenge.

Where else would I rather be?

Therapy by Tennis.

Both these sentences didn’t just get me back to writing, they got me back to writing furiously, ecstatically, the way I used to when I was young.

Challenge accepted.

Your turn.

What do the words ‘It’s supposed to be a challenge’ stir up in you?

Until next week —