5 Ways to Recharge After Suffering Writer’s Burnout

by Colleen M. Story

We’re coming to the end of the year—which means you may be feeling writer’s burnout.

Even a regular year of writing can be taxing. Add in a book launch (or two?), NaNoWriMo, and a few challenges on your WIP, and you may be thinking that you’d be just fine if you never wrote again!

But don’t worry. That’s the weariness talking. And weariness—even if it’s creeping into burnout—can be fixed with the right kind of rest.

Try the following suggestions and see if, by the time the new year comes around, you don't feel ready to pick up the pen (or keyboard) again.

1. Get Some Extra Sleep

Most of the time, you have to tend to the body first. Trying to restore your mind, emotions, and creativity while you’re still dragging around physically doesn’t work.

Writers are consistently up against deadlines and expectations. It’s common to end up at the end of the year feeling physically exhausted.

If you haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in a while, you’re getting sick more often, or you’re experiencing more aches and pains than usual, you need this type of rest.

Solution: Take some time to tend to your sleep routine. Make sure you have a comfortable, quality mattress (they should be replaced every 5-8 years usually), that your room is cool and quiet, and that you keep all technology (including televisions) out of the bedroom.

Then incorporate a daily stretching routine or yoga practice to ease muscle tension. Finally, give yourself at least a weekend to rest as much as you need to. Use naps as much as you like!

2. Give Your Brain a Break

Writing takes a lot of brain power. We have to keep our settings, characters, timelines, and plotlines straight, and then we have to make sure we reach all our editing, publishing, and marketing deadlines.

After a year of writing, marketing, and book launching, your brain needs a break. Sleep will help, but it’s not enough.

If you suffering from brain fog and you’re taking longer than usual to get your projects done, you need this type of rest.

Solution: Try meditating, crafting, coloring, and long walks. Then schedule at least half a day once or twice a week to banish browsing and let your brain veg out. Rekindle your love of daydreaming.

3. Cater to Your Feelings

The writing life is a roller coaster. We all feel the ups and downs. Writing acceptance! Writing rejection. Great review! Poor review. A day in the writing flow. A day of writer’s block.

If you’ve spent the year “sucking it up” through a variety of disappointments, you need this type of rest.

Solution: Share your feelings in a journal. Establish and maintain boundaries with other people. Take a step back from demanding relationships for a while. Do what makes you feel happy. Be self-indulgent! Grant yourself a day to do anything you want without guilt.

Then go back and re-read all the positive comments and reviews you’ve received on your writing.

4. Court Your Muse

After a year of writing and marketing, your creative muse may have gone into hiding. We expect it to always be there for us, but sometimes we ask too much of it and it naturally withdraws.

If you’re suffering from writer’s block or can’t come up with a new idea to save you, you need this kind of rest.

Solution: Get involved in activities that inspire you. Spend some time in nature. Allow yourself to experience beauty in any form. Expose yourself to some fine art or good music. Spend a day trying on outfits you love.  Spruce up your writing nook so it feels more conducive to creativity.

If you like, try writing something completely different than you usually do: a children’s story, poem, or personal essay.

5. Shut Out the World

Particularly if you’re an introverted writer, you could be suffering from sensory overload. All the interacting on social media, book signings, conference going, and other demands of the writing life can have you craving a dark room and lots of alone time. 

If you’re more irritable than usual or feel like your nerves are on end, you need this type of rest.

Solution: Indulge your inner mole. Shut yourself away from the world for a day or more if you can. Take a weekend to curl up with a good book or rent a cabin by the lake where all you’ll hear in the morning are the birds. Silence can be incredibly restorative.

 

NOTE: Through December 2022, all of Colleen's writing ebooks are on sale for only $2.99 or less! Get your copies here. You can also find free chapters of her book and a free giveaway here.

 

Colleen M. Story is a novelist, freelance writer, writing coach, and speaker with over 20 years in the creative writing industry. Her latest release, The Beached Ones, is from CamCat Books. Her novel, Loreena’s Gift, was a Foreword Reviews’ INDIES Book of the Year Awards winner, among others.

Colleen has written three books to help writers succeed. Your Writing Matters is the most recent, and was a bronze medal winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards (2022). Other award-winning titles include Writer Get Noticed! and Overwhelmed Writer Rescue. Enjoy free chapters of these books here.

Find more at her author website (colleenmstory.com) or connect with her on Twitter (@colleen_m_story) and LinkedIn.

 

Whilst You Wait on the Muse...

On IWSG blog hop days*, I read a lot of posts by writers suffering writer's block. Not being able to get into the word-count groove causes stress and breeds doubt and insecurity. My advice to blocked-up writers is usually to power through. To flip on the computer, open the file, and write. Even if they think every word they write is crap. It's still good, because crap makes excellent fertilizer and eventually, the good stuff will grow from it.

But there are times when even crap won't come. No matter how long a writer stares at the screen, there's nothing. I've hit that same wall and I have a couple more solutions:

Walk Away. 

There is probably some non-writing related project that is needing attention. Pick the most boring job and tackle it. Clean out a closet, scrub a tub...do something (anything) that is both dreadful and non-writing related.

Eventually, your brain will get bored and stories will start nagging you.

The problem with walking away for too long is writing/publishing is also about gaining momentum and a prolonged stop could mean starting over.

So, there is a second option- one that doesn't halt the momentum....

Get Busy!
Writing is a multi-faceted cornucopia of work. A writer could be busy twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and there would still be work left undone. On the days that the words won't come, here's a list of other things a writer can do whilst whiling away the hours between paragraphs:

 

Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, etc. There are plenty of platforms to join to interact with readers. Post, tweet, share...begin a dialogue and keep it going. This is important to me because as a READER nothing annoys me more than ONLY hearing from a writer when they want me to buy a book.That is probably odd considering I grew up in a time when writers were mostly faceless entities who lived in towers and sent out new stories via carrier pigeon or maybe magic. But those days are over, even Nora Roberts's Instagram account is active between calls to buy her books. Sure, it's most likely manned by her staff, but still, she's making contact and making it personal. 

No book to sell? Perfect time to build a following and be launch ready when the time comes.

Blog. A blog offers the opportunity to write in small, manageable chunks which can get the juices flowing. And even though blogging may not be as popular as it once was, it remains the home of some of my most loyal support in the writing world. The insecure Writers Support Group monthly blog hop is a great place to start making connections.

Network. Writer's groups (both online, like the IWSG, or the In Real Life variety), blogging, and attending writer events are a great use of time. Meeting other writers and sharing information and support are great ways to make connections and friendships. Any time I meet someone who has paid thousands of dollars to publish a book through a vanity press, I feel sad for them because I know they probably don't have many (if any) writer friends.

Study. Authors, editors, agents, publishers...almost anyone in the business has some advice to offer. There is an endless supply of free help on the internet. Check out blog posts, interviews, podcasts, and videos for useful information on every topic from craft to marketing.

Read!! Nothing is a better balm to the writer's soul than reading. Beta reads, pleasure reads, educational reads. If you can't be writing, be reading. Good books, bad books, all books! There are millions of them out there for your consumption- take advantage of them!


                                                                               ~*~

*The Insecure Writers Support Group offers a monthly blog hop where members can vent, share, and encourage one another in this intrepid adventure we call writing. If you're not already participating, join us!

#IWSG - Unlocking Writer's Block

Writer's block is real. Too many people have experienced it to say it doesn't exist. However, even though there may be many reasons for it, it can be overcome.

Many writers feel that we can slump or run into slow times, but they don't believe in writer's block. They advise that you stop thinking and let the creative side take over.
Just write, even if it stinks at first.
There's always a rewrite. 

 For some it's actually serious – a massive, soul-sucking obstacle. This could stem from the constant drive to be productive and the thought that if you’re not, there’s something wrong with you. Sometimes you just don’t have anything to say, and that’s fine. 

If you are blocked, have you considered that you may be going the wrong way, your brain is fried, or because you weren't in the mental space to write just then? Learn to think about it not as a block but more of a hurdle. 

If we look at it from yet another perspective - are you saying you didn't have a single possible idea for what might happen next, or are you saying you couldn't think of the idea that was suitable enough for you to put it on paper? Looked at in this way, a block is absence of possibility.

 

On a positive and final note, maybe we need to see writer's block as a sort of siesta... or a catnap... or a snooze. Sounds quite pleasant, doesn't it? It's the mind taking a quick break as it tries to change the subject for a moment. 

So you choose - hurdle, absence of possibility or siesta?

I kind of like the idea of viewing it as a siesta, which leads to a recharge of your mental batteries allowing the ideas to flow freely once again.

5 Steps to Deal with Writer’s Block

Some authors claim there’s no such thing as writer’s block. They say with conviction in their heart that all you have to do is write through it and it’s gone. I’ll tell you now, for me writer’s block is real. It’s usually born from a deeper root than simply being unable to come up with a fresh idea, or imagine the characters with enough clarity to make them sing on the page. Writer’s block is born from that deep dark place we don’t like to talk about—the dark alley of our minds where Courage is cornered by Fear and Doubt, along with Stress, Boredom, Frustration, and Pressure.

Let’s look at the first bad guy: Fear. On his own, Fear isn’t so bad. We need Fear to keep us from growing complacent, to push us to do better, and not settle for “close enough.” Fear keeps the adrenaline flowing. But Fear is the father of Doubt. Put them together and they turn into a nasty pair. Together they put us through no end of self-torture. They slow us down, make us second guess ourselves, or push us to pull away from taking the risky route of trying something new. And that’s just the start. Fear and Doubt are ringleaders. They call in a gang of other distastefuls and use their powers to keep us from writing.

Without understanding what these guys are up to, we might try to push through the wall that’s blocking us, only to earn a sore shoulder and a broken spirit.

So how can we deal with Fear and Doubt and the rest of the gang when they pounce? Unfortunately there’s no one, easy solution, no snap of the fingers and they’re gone. It takes recognition of what’s happening, a desire to change what’s happening, and then the strength to take action.

And the action we need to take? I’ve found the best way to avoid becoming a victim is to follow these steps:

1. Nurture a realistic perspective on your writing. Fanciful thoughts about our writing have a tendency to sweep us away. For example, my first draft will be gold, I should be earning good money by now, the first novel I ever write is going to become a world famous bestseller. These unrealistic thoughts inevitably lead to giving the Fear Gang an invitation to come visit. Success and satisfaction through writing come through practice, hard work, time, and more writing with lots of frustration and joy along the way.

2. Be aware of your surroundings. Be on guard for the nasties lurking in the shadows so when they pounce—and they will pounce because that’s part of being a creative person—you can stand tall and defend yourself. In other words, know what’s “normal” in your writing life. You will experience ups and downs, moments of inspiration and times when ideas are sparse, but that’s okay. That’s normal for any writer so there’s no need to flail yourself over a perceived failure. Sometimes life will get in the way of writing, and that’s okay too. We write about life, even when we write about other worlds, so even those unavoidable distractions can be used to generate more ideas for writing.

3. Make eye contact. Remember the bad guys are cowards because they only attack when you’re at your weakest. So when you do get jumped, don’t react like a victim. Don’t think your writing career is over. Make eye contact and show you know who the attackers are and you aren’t afraid of them. Do this, and there’s less chance of getting backed into an inescapable corner.

4. Run for help. There’s no substitute for an understanding friend, or a supportive group who know exactly what you’re going through. There’s no reason to suffer or struggle alone. Speak up. We’ve all experienced it.

5. Keep writing. Even if you have five minutes for writing, even if you can only scratch out a single sentence. All writing is beneficial. None of it is wasted effort. Even the ugly stuff we’ll never show anyone. Just keep writing and don’t give up. Remember, you started on this journey for a reason. Don’t let the nasties stop you.

What are the things that stop you from writing? What do you do when you encounter a lack of inspiration or desire to write?

Lynda R Young