Avoiding Burnout for Writers
It’s easy to burn out. Believe me. I’ve done it. I burned out for several months at a time during one stage in my life. I was unemployed, out of a serious relationship, had less than €100 to my name, and didn’t know where I was going to live. Suffice to say, it was a tough start to the year. I didn’t write for about 3 months as I tried to put my life back together and find my feet again. I didn’t want to write. I wasn’t even thinking about it. Roll back to the previous year, where I was a victim of NaNoWriMo – Slayer of Writers. I worked too hard and burned out.
One burnout came from letting personal situations affect my writing; the other, from trying to do too much in a short span of time. As you can see, writer’s burnout can come in many different forms. The last form, of course, is the dreaded ‘overcoming the blank page’ phobia that all writers go through (every damn time they open a new document!) Be sure to check out: Your Muse Is Dead – Get Over It, for more insights.
So, how do we avoid the dreaded burnout?Walk away from it. Allow yourself guilt-free time away from it. You finish your day job and don’t feel bad about putting your feet up and relaxing, do you? Allow yourself that kind of peace and anxiety-free rest. Or go get drunk and wallow in self pity and loathing. All other jobs reward time off for hard work, so why should you treat your writing any different?
Burn out is just as common as writer’s block. Either we write too damn fast or not at all.
Click To Tweet
So here’s my advice: slow down. Have a beer. Take a nap. Go talk to people who aren’t fictional characters in your head and I’m sure you’ll come back to your manuscript stronger and more focused than ever.
Try writing something completely different like a short fiction story, or even poetry. Try mix genres for a while. Want to write that zombie erotica that’s always been on the back of your mind? Sure, why not? Go right ahead. Write for pleasure and write whatever strange new unexplored avenues you’ve always avoided.
Write for an audience of one. If it sucks, it doesn’t matter. No one has to read it but you.
Click To Tweet
Heck, really change things up and use pen and paper instead of your computer.
Here’s a few others which may help:
Change the way you think about your writing
Think of your writing as something more. It’s writing, it’s fiction, it’s literature, it’s philosophy. Whatever. Your words are your story, your creation, and it’s perfectly fine if the most they do is bring you enjoyment. Every sentence doesn’t need to be earth-shattering or a masterpiece; sometimes you need to remember that great writing doesn’t look like writing at all. If you want to draw attention to your word choices, then try poetry for a while. Writing too many words? Then try short stories for a while (or mix it up and try write a drabble story.)
Reduce The Stop-And-StartAre you able to sit down and write with relatively little distraction, or is a ringing phone or crying child causing you to have to constantly stop in the middle, and then come back and start up again? Are you tasked with lots of non-writing related tasks that cause you to break up the day and actually get less done? That constant stopping and starting is as wearing to your writing as driving a car at high speed, slamming on the brakes, and repeating it over and over again.
My personal advice: invest in a decent pair of sound-cancelling headphones. Best investment I’ve ever made. Incase you’re wondering what music I tend to listen to while writing, the answer is nothing! I just use them for the silence they bring.
See if you can’t work out a way to set aside large chunks of time (and a quiet place) per writing project to reduce the energy drain that it takes to keep starting back up after you’ve ground to a halt. It should be an easy sell; much time is wasted when you have to come back to a project and re-read everything to figure out where you were headed with your writing.
Knowing the symptoms of burnout gives you the opportunity to take steps to get back into balance.
Have you ever had writer burnout? What did you do to get past it?
The post Avoiding Burnout for Writers appeared first on Paul W Ryan.
