Beating Post-Conference Blues

You go to a conference, get all revved up, take pages of notes, make friends and contacts, come home, and… thump, everything falls apart. You don’t want to write, don’t want to think about writing, don’t want to think about how you don’t want to think about writing.

Welcome to post-conference blues.

I was fortunate this year because I didn’t battle the blues, but I have in the past and frankly, it stinks. So when the topic came up in one of my writing e-mail lists, my mind started churning: What did I do differently this time?

And the answer is nothing.

That is, I did no writing, no brainstorming, no trying to apply what I learned or frantically fixing up the proposal requested. For a week after the conference, I rested, restocking the emotional, metal, and physical reserves drained by the conference. I did a bit of journaling about the conference itself. Spent time with relatives. Watched some television. Slept hard. Ate chocolate.

It worked.

By the time I reached home, I felt refreshed. A day-long writing retreat with two close writing friends a couple days later provided the final kick-start I needed, and now I’m back into schedule, writing several hours a day.

And that beats the blues any day.