Thanks to some encouraging news, I’ve been pushing myself over the last few days with some of my writing projects. I’ve reread, edited, and plotted for more hours than I usually dedicate to projects in one day, and now I’ve gotten into rewriting. Generally, a decent day of writing a story for me involves 3 or 4 handwritten pages. Rather than a stopping point, though, I’m trying to make that number a minimum, something I only finish the day at because there’s too much other life happening that there’s no real time to generate more than that. Hoo boy, is that hard.

The reason 3 or 4 pages is usually the limit is that by that point, my brain feels stretched, an elastic I’ve pulled and pulled and I can’t tug on anymore because then it will just snap. This is the point where I actually jump on the chance to do chores around the house, or leave for my job, because my brain doesn’t have the capacity to write any more.

But I can’t think of my brain as something that I’ll just break apart if I push it too far. It’s a muscle, and just like how every yoga class I’m a little bit closer to touching my forehead on my toes, if I keep pushing myself to my limit — and then a little bit beyond — I’ll be able to write more, and more, and maybe one day even pump out a dozen pages over the course of the day without feeling as if I’m about to collapse.