I Wrote Too Much and Injured My Arm, But I’m Not Giving Up

So many writers feel the pressure to publish faster.

We need a bigger backlog of articles to grow our audience. We have to put more work out there to amass feedback and improve.

But what do we do if we sustain injuries in our mad dash towards our goals? Perhaps we should slow down and lower our expectations. We can’t just abandon our health, right?

Like many other writers here, I pushed myself to write more, hone my skills, and increase my readership. I used to publish once a week. This rose to about 1.5 times a week. Now it’s 2–3 times a week. I also moonlight as an erotica writer on another account.

But it seemed like I was too slow. I often compare myself to friends who publish daily or almost daily. So I felt like I wasn’t measuring up and that I must be too disorganized and inefficient.

So I pushed even harder.

I like to draft by hand, and I was so stubborn that even when my arm was in pain, I kept writing.

I was punished when my arm got injured.

This is not the first time this has happened. Last December, I did so much journaling by hand, that I sustained an arm injury that took a few months to heal.

This time, I stopped myself a bit sooner, but I still had to rest.

So I relied on typing instead. I started doing some arm rehabilitation exercises, vowing to strengthen my arm muscles so that I wouldn’t get hurt again. I also went back to the gym. I’ve always loved the gym, but I stopped for some months to experiment with other forms of exercise, such as swimming.

But soon, my fingers, arms, and shoulders became sore from all that typing. Later, I rushed a draft overnight and my right arm grew disturbingly numb…

At that moment, I thought of David B. Clear, who is one of my favorite writers. He has a typing injury and uses speech-to-text for all of his writing. I recalled a post from him that I had planned to read soon: A Typing Injury Almost Killed My Career — Don’t Make the Same Mistake. So I searched up his article like it could be the solution to my growing unease.

David’s story was very touching, with many insights about speech-to-text software that I wasn’t aware of. His story was inspiring, but I won’t spoil the details for you. In the comments, David mentioned that he used the Dragon dictation software from Nuance.

The Dragon felt like a lantern of hope.

It was frustrating to use the speech-to-text software at first, as I kept messing up, but I grew to like it as I became more familiar with the process. The Dragon is more powerful than the Google speech-to-text, though it’s admittedly pricey. But it’s worth it. I could finally give my arms a well-deserved break.

Further Realizations

I’m technically still going to the gym. Except I stubbed and bruised my toe earlier this week and have to rest for several days. It makes me wonder why I keep injuring myself.

But still, I wasn’t going to give up. I am recovering and will return to the gym soon. The gym almost never fails to make me happier and more energized. This is helpful since I often feel tired.

Moreover, I realized that I typically write longer and heavier stories, which could be one reason why I feel exhausted much of the time. So, I got myself to write a shorter piece just for fun.

This is a short story starring a phoenix who sells blown glass baubles for a living. She is haunted by the ghost of her dead brother, and harassed by a unicorn prince who acts like an entitled “Karen.”

The story was actually dark and sad, but I had so much fun writing it! I was physically tired, but emotionally, I felt more relaxed than I had in ages. My story was in response to Bradan Writes Stories’ writing prompt.

A number of friends chimed in and gave me some flattering praise. Jann Christoph von der Pütten and Cathylouise, fellow fiction writers, have kindly promoted my story on Twitter, too.

Thank you as well to other fiction writer friends who have kept me company, such as Jonathon Sawyer, JF Danskin, Novus Grey, Rayne Sanning, and many others! On a platform like Medium where most stories are nonfiction, it’s easy to feel that we need to focus on nonfiction and deprioritize our fiction. It has been immensely helpful to be in a supportive community of fiction writers on Medium, thank you!

Final Thoughts

In the past, I would be terrified by my illnesses and injuries, and just lower my goals and expectations. Yet, I had lowered them so much, that I had given up on some dreams without realizing it.

I failed to recognize that health and ambition were not always in conflict. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.

In fact, I found that achieving more actually improves my mental health — I feel more competent and fulfilled in my life.

By achieving, I don’t mean huge things like writing viral articles or winning the Nobel Prize. Even small accomplishments, such as getting amazing compliments from editors and readers, is a victory worth celebrating.

I will keep going to the gym to maintain my health. And I will alternate between the Dragon dictation software and typing, since both my arm muscles and my vocal cords need to take breaks. I will return to writing by hand eventually, but for now, I still need to rest.

Plus, I’ll be careful to stop when I’m in pain. I suffered a lot, but I’ve grown wiser and more strategic at taking care of my health while writing at a faster pace.

Over to You

Do you often feel like you have to choose between your health and your ambitions? Do you get scared when you sustain injuries from overwork, but think you have no choice but to keep pushing on anyway? What strategies did you find to maintain your health while pursuing your goals?

When it comes to re-evaluating our goals and schedules for productivity, I recommend JF Danskin’s article here. He is a lot more prolific than I am, so I enjoyed reading about his experiments with different publishing routines.

Note: If you write a lot of fiction, we’re friends, but I didn’t tag you, it doesn’t mean I don’t like you. I just didn’t want to tag too many writers and make the article look too promotional. So I just named a few fiction-writer friends I have talked to most lately.

Originally published on New Writers Welcome on Sept 26, 2022