On stress relief

I know I have a problem with being what I like to call high-strung. I deal with it, and I've recently encountered a trick that works for me. Technically Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way recommends these "morning pages", free-writing for as long as the words keep flowing, to clear your head in the morning, but I've found that the morning is the time I rarely need them. Instead, I write when nervousness builds, and it helps me immensely. By the time I hit 1 000 words, the problems are formulated, solved, and I feel calm. The trick is not to re-read as you write, just write until it dries up.

And if I do manage to write in the morning, I can write fiction, too - usually nice mood-vignettes that work in quiet ways. This is yesterday's: Thanatos is the Greek personification of Death I've written of before.

( 320 AD, a meadow in Dacia )