#avoiding burnout

It doesn’t mean I don’t like you!

Like there’s executive functioning life stuff like house cleaning and homework and work. Or even fun that is still productive and takes work, like my creative projects, TTRPG campaigns, and social events.

Hi yall, it’s been wonderful seeing ask-the-prose posts going around writeblr and I’m so happy to see that some of these guides are helpful. If you have a specific topic you’d like me to cover, send in an ask!

What is burnout?

Burnout is incredibly common and nothing to be ashamed of! If you find you are too exhausted to do what you love, running out of ideas, or perhaps not wanting to do anything, you may be burned out. Burnout can pose a serious block to your writing, and it’s just not fun.

Burnout can happen when you’re stretching yourself too thin, spending more time and energy creating than taking in creativity, or not taking care of yourself the way you need.

Step 1: Put out the fire

One of the number one ways to fast-track your way to burnout is to forget to care for yourself. We’re writers! Sometimes we get in the zone, or maybe a little obsessed, and we forget to eat, hydrate, and maybe even put off sleep. But ignoring self-care is unsustainable.

We all see posts all over reminding us to hydrate, eat well, sleep, and even stretch, but these are genuinely great tips to remember when you’re not feeling well. I’d like to add a few ideas to try when you’re feeling down.

Exercise. Walk, run, play a sport, do anything that helps move your body, whatever you can do to help your blood flow, even if it’s just a few push-ups or a good stretch.

Find a new set of walls to stare at. I get in a rut going to the same places or staying home when I have nowhere to go. But hanging out at a coffee shop or cafe helps me often. It’s a chance to observe people, see new things, and get some sunlight. If you need to shake it up, try a new cafe!

Socialize. Sometimes burnout looks like loneliness. Socialize! Talk to a friend or family member, or make a new friend! New perspectives help.

Not all of these work for everybody, but they’re friendly suggestions to try when you’re feeling burnout coming on.

Step 2: Replenish your reserves

As creatives, we get stuck always wanting to create, but that’s not sustainable either! Creativity is not just an internal process, we need external stimulation to replenish our creative reserves. When you feel like you just can’t come up with ideas or anything new, maybe it’s time to read.

Reading can help, though I personally understand the struggle to read (and finish!) books. Start with short stories or novellas if you struggle to read novels. Read within the genre you’re trying to write, and then step out of your genre and try something new. You never know when inspiration will strike.

Watch movies, listen to new music, play a video game, or do anything that can give you a creative boost. Reading is critical, but learning about other mediums is just as important.

Step 3: Self-indulgence is key

You may find as you’re recovering from the burnout that your wip may just be what’s causing the problem. Ask yourself some important questions:

Am I writing for myself?

Am I writing something that I want to write?

If not, what do I want to write about?

Do I like what I’m writing, or do I feel like it’s what everyone wants to read?

Answer these questions for yourself, and if you find you don’t like those answers, take a look at your project and see what you can or want to change. Remember, if it’s not fun and it’s not what you want, then it might not be worth it.

Take what you need, leave what you don’t

As always, this guide is meant to be helpful, and as with all writing advice, it’s entirely subjective. I believe these tips work because they worked for me. But if you find that something isn’t helping, leave it! Move on or adjust to what you as an individual need to recover from your burnout.

Remember that no writing is ever wasted and that your writing matters. We need your voice too!

You are allowed to create the experiences you surround yourself with. You are allowed to remove media, stimuli, and even people that do not make you happy.

You are not obligated to watch a show that upsets you, to constantly bombard yourself with news articles that make you anxious, or keep in touch with people who bring negativity into your life (whether actively or passively). There was a period of time when sitting down with my phone to relax actually made me anxious, and that prompted me to reflect and go through the sort of posts, people, and media that I was consuming or being shown. Surround yourself with things that you enjoy, news and topics you find interesting, hobbies, and media you find fulfilling or make you smile.

For me that meant I eliminated a few key things:

SAD COMICS ON MY FEED (these mess with me a ton and I don't want to be scrolling on my break and then start crying)

Constant streams of bad news! I still keep up to date but I selected a few trusted sources and listen/watch them at specific times so I'm not constantly overwhelmed.

Triggering media ( enough said tbh)

Toxic dynamics in certain internet circles ( I'm a dancer, less so now bc of EDS but I love to dance but I found myself exposed to a lot of toxicity, especially regarding body image and eating habits in some circles)

Changing this stuff really helped me and I noticed a lot less doom scrolling.

Curate your internet experience, as weird as it may sound it's a form of self-care and can have a fairly potent effect on mental health!

If you made it through this post please enjoy this cat photo

Hey! 'Grats!

Okay, let's see now. These are some things that have worked for me:

Regular breaks. There's a quote that says something like 90% of writing a novel is thinking. Make sure you give yourself plenty of breathing room to refill the creative well. And by 'breathing room' I mean a few days not a few hours.

Treat each chapter/ section like a short story. I find focusing on a bit at a time with breaks in between stops me from getting overwhelmed or burning out.

Snacks! Gotta keep your brain fed with healthy snacks like nuts, dried fruit, and jerky. Make sure it's protein-based or complex carbs to avoid sugar crashes.

Be gentle with yourself. No berating yourself for not meeting some far-flung goal. No pushing yourself too hard, take it slow and steady. You'll get there, I promise.

I hope some of those ideas help.

You got this, I know you do 🧡️ Good luck! Happy wording!

The tips that I’m listing below are not foolproof, but as a non-professional author who writes over 2500 a day, almost every day, I thought I might post what I do to keep that sustainable (especially because five months ago, I could only write 200 words a day).

1) Don’t hold yourself to someone else’s standards. I know that I said what I wrote in any given day, and if that’s something you breeze by, then that’s awesome! If that’s something that’s in no way realistic for you, then I’m glad that you’re able to recognise where your limits are. How much you write in a given day does not make you any better or any worse of a writer than anyone else.

2) Make your daily writing goal high enough that it will get you writing most days, but low enough that it can accomodate bad days. That way when you’re having a bad day, you can still get that satisfaction of meeting your goal. My daily goal is SIGNIFICANTLY lower than what my average is, and on bad days, it’s not an easy goal (but it’s doable).

3) Break up your writing. Sitting down and deciding to get all of it done at once is overwhelming. Instead I usually break it down into two or three chunks. And they don’t have to be even. Earlier in the day, I might get 1000 words done in a single sitting, and in the evening if I’m tired, I’ll get somewhere closer to 50. It’s more about moving the story forward.

4) Stay hydrated. And eat food. When you’re hungry and dehydrated, your patience is a lot lower, as is your attention span and emotional capacity. You’ll get frustrated more easily. I usually like to keep a waterbottle and a small container of almonds at my desk so that I can keep myself fed and hydrated without breaking my work flow.

5) Prioritize “active work” and “passive work” to your advantage. I consider active work to be reading over my previous work, writing, making notes on my research, and managing my tumblr. I consider passive work to be more brainless stuff: Listening to podcasts and youtube videos about the writing craft or that thing you needed to research, or thinking about your story in the shower. If I’m having a good day, I’ll focus more on active work, as it takes up the bulk of the writing process, and requires more energy. If I’m taking a break or I’m not having a great day but I still want to be productive, then I’ll do passive stuff. Frequently if it’s something I’m listening to, I’ll play a completely unrelated computer game that doesn’t involve much in the way of words or sound.

6) Respect your sleep. You’re going to be in a better mood when you’ve gotten the sleep you need, whatever amount that is for you, and you’ll also have more energy to write. This means going to bed at a decent hour, and it also means getting off of screens a fair amount of time before that. I put a hard stop on being on screens at 8:30pm which is a bit extreme, but it works. I usually save homework that’s not electronic for after that, as well as aspects of writing/editing that can be done on paper by hand.

7) Respect your non-writing commitments. If you’re skipping out on doing your homework or hanging out with people, that’s likely going to start causing stress. Stress kills creativity (this is why we have our best ideas in the shower or right as we drift off to sleep - scientifically proven). Also, balance is key to being healthy.

8) If you feel yourself coming close to a burnout, STOP. It takes a while to recover from burnout, which can sometimes lead to writer’s block. It’s a LOT easier to recover from almost burnout (Think somewhere in the realm of several hours to a day, compared to several days). Do something else. Get outside. Maybe switch to passive work. A few more words is not worth several days of having to strain to write anything at all.

So, you’re a writer. Yay! And you write, and you write, and you write, and you write... And you sit down to start writing again, but this time something’s different. You have words inside of you still, but translating them to the page is significantly harder. It’s not writer’s block, you know where you want to go, but you’re overexerted.

You’re burned out.

Often we hear of burn-out students who spend weeks on end operating on three or four hours of sleep, students who crash and need that time to recover. We hear the same of jobs and almost everything else in life.

Writing, though, has a wonderful tendency to fall below the radar when concerns like this arise. We associate issues with writing more closely with writer’s block than its polar opposite.

What exactly is burnout?

Basically, you’ve exhausted some aspect of something you’ve been doing for a while now. Think of the process like a sink; the water is still running, it’s still there, but you’ve had the tap on for so long now that the faucet starts to slow the flow until you can barely get more than a drip at a time.

Burnout comes from the stress of trying to meet constant demands, be them external or internal. In my own personal experience, I encountered burnout not too long ago from pressuring myself to write 2000 words every day. It was a sizable amount, and I enjoyed reaching my goal, but that sort of exhaustion caught up to me after about six weeks and I had to call it.

Burnout can be caused by several other factors (x), including:

unclearness of your goals when you sit down to write

excessively high goals that are much more difficult to achieve

a lack of recognition or awareness of the work you’ve put in

How can I avoid burnout?

Based on some of the causes listed above, it seems that burnout can happen with anything (which it definitely can!). However, if your own feelings are taken into account and you know how you’re feeling when you sit down to write, steps can be taken to help avoid burnout.

Certainty. Burnout can often come from a lack of certainty when you sit down to write; if you’re working for an indeterminate amount of time to hit a milestone you’re unsure of, that uncertainty can take a toll on your attitude towards whatever you’re working on. Take the time before and after your writing sessions to analyze different aspects of your process, and maybe even write them down. It might even be a good idea to start a spreadsheet; think about how long you’re going to write for, exactly what you want to do, how you’re feeling about the project, etc.

Goals. Like I mentioned earlier, burnout can come from constant demand or unattainable goals. Make sure that your goals are achievable for the time constraints you’re setting, or that they at least come in stages so that you don’t feel you’ve been wasting your time. Even if you start off with a small warm-up goal, that’ll get you going in a way that will keep you fueled for the rest of your session.

Recognition. We’ve seen the comments all over this platform and other by now, about how it’s important that writers and content producers in general feel recognized and valued for the work that they do. Make sure you’re taking the time first and foremost to recognize yourself and all the hard work you’re putting in; even if nobody else knows about it, you do. Then, maybe consider finding someone you trust to tell about your progress so far, or post some snippets here on Tumblr for your audience to see!

tl;dr - Burnout is one of those things that just happens sometimes, and it’s never fun when it does. While it’s not unavoidable, there are certain steps we can take to help keep ourselves feeling good about our writing.