#dragonfliies

i’ve been really good, thank you for asking! and you’re absolutely fine to ask me for advice, but I can’t promise that everything I say will be super helpful!

how to motivate yourself to write when you’re burnt out

1 → Take care of yourself. I know it’s the first step that anyone ever gives when they give burnout advice, but it’s true.

Listen to your body. Have you eaten today? Have you had water today? Have you taken your medication, if applicable? Have you slept? Take care of yourself physically, and then emotionally: How are you feeling? What words describe your mental and emotional state? How can you take care of yourself, if those words are negative? Make a playlist. Drink a cup of tea with honey and lemon. Do something that makes you feel refreshed, or at least a little more at ease with yourself.

2 → Set small goals. I use Habitica to keep track of my goals, so on there, I set up something that I call The Serotonin Button. It takes advantage of my core personality trait, which is “press button, get happy.” This is The Serotonin Button: 

Every single time I write 250 words, I get to press the button. You see that little “+20″ in the bottom corner? I got to press the button 20 times today. That’s a lot of button pressing, and honestly? I’m in love.

Set up a system that rewards your small goals, and makes you want to reach them again and again.

3 → Remember: You have time. It’s cliché. I know it is. You know I know it is. I mean, I’m giving you advice, and meanwhile I’m over here having a quarter-life crisis (and really, how silly is it that humans are allowed to have more than one crisis per lifetime? I’d like to only have one, please).

I have to remind myself every day that it’s okay if I take my time to finish this draft. It’s okay if I don’t finish this WIP, or if I set it on the backburner for now. It’s okay if I take a step back away from tumblr, or away from my writing, for a bit. It’s okay if I’m just a little too tired to do this right now, because there’s a Future Me that will be able to handle it a little better than I can right now.

4 → Write something that you enjoy writing. Don’t pressure yourself to create perfectly. Don’t make something because you think tumblr would like it. Don’t make something because you think your friends would like it. Make it because you enjoy it, and because you want to see it completed, or maybe just because you want to see how it feels, or you want to try out the genre, or you want to push your limits.

Do it for yourself. Be selfish, in this regard. In the end, you are your first critic. You are your first reader. You are the first set of eyes that will see this work, and it’s so, so much more emotionally rewarding when you’re reading something that you legitimately, honestly enjoyed writing.

5 → Be reasonable! Don’t hurt yourself. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t hold yourself to dizzying standards. Don’t set goals you cannot reasonably reach.

In my first year of college, I was 18 and I was invincible, so of course I decided I was going to do NaNo. And my family was taking an out-of-town vacation in the last week of November, so of course I decided I had to do NaNo in 3 weeks instead of 4. I ended up writing 88000 words over the course of 22 days.

I did not finish another novel for 4 years.

I’ve found ‘motivation’ is rarely the problem; motivation comes with discipline, and discipline comes with giving yourself silly little things like The Serotonin Button that let off a little steam and give you a way to express yourself simultaneously.

Let yourself have nice things. Write things you enjoy, and enjoy what you write. Build a framework that works for you, and don’t put unreasonable goals on yourself.

okay you can’t say that and then not do it!! but your color choices made me laugh oh my god?? i’m not going to therapy without you. we both like dnd so we have a solid reason to be there