Surprising Revelations (about the way I view my writing)

So I have been making myself go through the Marriage by Obligation Series since discovering the errors in Secret Admirer. I have Anyone But the Marquess coming out next month, and I want to make sure the series fits it. I’ve been blabbing on and on about burnout on this blog, so I doubt anyone is shocked to learn that I wrote all of these books while at the low points of my burnout phase. Those books were like pulling teeth the entire time I wrote them. I loved the stories, but I hated the process of writing them. I don’t even know how to explain how I was able to write while feeling that way. It was not easy. I spent a lot of time walking just to cope.

Anyway, to my surprise, these books don’t sound (to me) like someone who was going through burnout while writing them. As I listened to them, it was as if the past couple of years never happened. How I managed to pull that off is anyone’s guess. Maybe those walks helped clear my head enough to do an effective job.

I’m relieved. I put off listening to those books for so long because I dreaded how they would sound as I listened to them. I only listened to them because I wanted to make sure I had the right consistency elements in Anyone But the Marquess. I’m also moving forward with more books in this series, so I wanted to refresh my memory on what happened with characters like Lord Dayton and Oscar because they will be getting their own romances in this series. Usually, I cap my Regency series off at Book 5, but this time, I’m going to keep going because of the love potion angle. This angle was brought up a lot in Anyone But the Marquess. I have not yet decided whether the love potion should work or not. This is fiction, so anything is possible. I don’t like restricting myself to “reality” too much. It might be fun for Oscar to prove he can do it. But only time will tell how that subplot plays out in this series.

Another surprising thing I discovered is that it is possible to get one’s enthusiasm back for writing after going through years of burnout. I honestly thought I was done when I finished Worth the Risk. I know some people reached out wanting Felix’s romance, and I had one person who told me she wanted another historical western. At the time, I could not make myself write anything, even though I wanted to write the books they were looking forward to reading. I ended up reaching a point where I had to step away from writing because I couldn’t write anything else, no matter how hard I tried. I was completely out of “gas” in my creative tank. The break I took did help.

But when I think back on that time in my life, I believe my burnout boiled down to what outside influences I was listening to. There is so much doom-and-gloom messaging going on all over the place. It’s on social media, it’s on TV, it’s on the radio, it’s on billboards, etc. All around me, it feels like I’m being assaulted with too much, “This is the end of the country, and when the US crashes, the rest of the world is going with it,” messages. It doesn’t even matter what political affiliation you have. Both sides have this “if so-and-so gets into office, we’re all doomed” mantra. I didn’t realize it at the time, but listening to the news did do me no favors. Also, listening to negative messages about how the environment and the food are killing all of us didn’t help, either. I get why this anxiety-producing content exists. This type of content gets clicks, and clicks means more ads, and more ads mean more money for the platforms that have this content. I can’t even hang out with my friends without some of the “if this happens, we’re doomed” messages creeping into conversations, too. It is all over the place. A person has to make an effort to detox from all of it.

I think all of the fear-based content stressed me out, and I think that the stress punched my creativity in the gut so hard that I ended up not being able to write anymore. I decided to listen to music instead. I decided to spend my relaxation time playing Mario Party games (don’t judge me, but I love Mario) and I watched a lot of comedies. I did watch other content, but these were about improving my financial situation and getting healthier. And, of course, I kept walking. It has made a world of difference. For one, my dry eye cleared up. Who knew my dry eye was related to the “doom and gloom” stress? I am floored, but dry eye has not been a problem for months. And I have my creativity back in full force. I won’t say this happened overnight, but things were so much better in just one month. So I learned that you have to be careful about what you listen to and what you watch. These things really have an impact on your health, creativity, and emotional state.

I have learned my lesson. I’m not participating in the whole “the world is going to collapse” thing anymore. I’ve decided even if things are as bad as people are saying, I can’t change things by worrying about them. All worrying does is prevents me from writing books that I love.

A final thing that surprises me is that I realized if I enjoy listening to my own book, it doesn’t matter how much money that book brought me. I love the story, and that’s all that ultimately matters. (Now, I am looking into investing because I believe that is a good buffer for not making much money with writing income, but that’s a rabbit hole I won’t go down in this post.) Suffice it to say that writing for passion means that you can look back on your books and be content with them. To me, that’s a good reason to embrace the passion side of writing.