Why I Stopped Trying to Create Every Day (and Started Planning Around My Cycle)

A few years ago, I met a man at a literary event who told me, with the calm confidence of someone who has never once been betrayed by his own body, that he writes for five hours a day. Every day. Straight through, no exceptions, the same five hours every morning. I smiled and said something encouraging, and then I went home and thought about it for a very long time, because I could not do that if you paid me.

I have endometriosis, which means that for at least five days of every month, I can’t pull myself out of bed, whether it’s because of the cramps or the bone-deep exhaustion that comes with them. Five days. That’s more than a month of the year, every year, that the five-hours-a-day guys get to spend writing and I get to spend curled up with a heating pad, negotiating with my own uterus. So yes, delighters, I’ll admit it: for a long time I was more than a little envious of the men who could create any day of the week.

What it’s like to create with endometriosis

If you’ve never had it, endometriosis is a chronic condition where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside of it, and it can cause severe pain, especially during your period, along with fatigue and a long list of other symptoms. According to the World Health Organization, it affects roughly 10% of women and girls of reproductive age around the world, which is about 190 million of us, and yet so many women go years before anyone takes their pain seriously enough to name it.

For a creative person, the hardest part isn’t only the pain, it’s what the pain does to your sense of yourself as someone who makes things. As a full-time author, I treated my flare days like failures for years, lying in bed reading about other people’s writing routines (written, it seemed, by men with very quiet bodies) and feeling worse with every one.

My body was never the obstacle to my creative life. My schedule was, because it was built for someone else’s body.

What does it mean to create around your cycle?

At some point I started paying attention, really paying attention, to the rhythm of my month instead of fighting it. You may have heard of “cycle syncing,” the idea that the four phases of the menstrual cycle (menstrual, follicular, ovulatory and luteal) come with shifts in energy and mood, and that you can plan your life around them. I want to be honest that the science on cycle syncing is still thin, and every body is different, so I don’t treat it as a rulebook. I treat it as permission to notice what my own body is already telling me.

And once I noticed, the pattern was obvious: some days the ideas come faster than I can type them, and some days the kindest thing I can do for my writing is rest.

How I plan my creative month now

During my period, I rest without apologizing. These are my heating-pad days. If I can do anything at all, I read, because reading is still part of writing, or I listen to an audiobook and let Charlie keep my feet warm. I don’t open the manuscript, and I’ve stopped feeling guilty about it.

In the week after, I start new things. When my energy comes back, it usually comes back curious, so this is when I brainstorm, outline and draft the scenes that need a fresh mind. I front-load my word count here, while it feels easy.

Around the middle of the month, I say yes to people. This is when I’m most social, so it’s when I schedule interviews, calls, pitches and anything that requires me to be charming on purpose.

In the last week or so, I revise and finish. When I get more inward and critical, I put that eye to good use on editing and polishing, so I go into my rest days with the work in a good place.

Some months my body ignores the plan completely, of course. But knowing roughly what’s coming lets me set goals for the whole month instead of pretending every day is the same, and somehow I write more this way, not less.

You are not behind

I think about that five-hours-a-day man differently now. I don’t envy him as much, because I’ve realized his routine was never designed for a body like mine, and mine was never supposed to be measured against his. A creative life with a chronic illness isn’t a smaller life. It’s a life with a different rhythm, and there is grace in learning to keep time with it (I’m still learning, and I thank God for the patience to keep trying).

If you’re reading this from your own bed with your own heating pad, here is my sisterly reminder: rest is not the opposite of creating. The ideas will still be there when you’re ready, and so will the page.

A note if your periods are this painful

Period pain that keeps you in bed is common, but it isn’t something you just have to live with in silence. If your cramps are severe, if they’re getting worse, or if they come with exhaustion, heavy bleeding or pain at other times of the month, please talk to a doctor or gynecologist and ask about endometriosis by name. I’m a writer, not a doctor, so nothing here is medical advice, but I can tell you from experience that being believed changes everything. And if you’re looking for a gentler rhythm, you might like my evening walk that ends my writing day.