Navigating Burnout: To Quit or To Push Through

AKA: I’m so sick of writing this book!

I’ve been writing a novel called 312 since, oh, roughly the beginning of time.

I’m so sick of this book. I don’t want to finish it. I don’t want to ever think about it again. It’s making me crazy. It’s a contemporary Young Adult novel and I hate it.

Why did I ever think writing a book about a suicidal fat girl was a good idea? Have I ever met myself? I don’t do sad things.

I just want to put this book away and write something magical. I have unicorns and elves dancing in my head right now. And I don’t even write fantasy.

But this morning, I woke up and wrote 1000 words.

That put me at 65,000. So, I’ll wake up every morning for the next 15 or 20 days and write 1000 words. Because I need to actually finish writing this book, even though I’m so over it.

The truth is, I’m always over my book projects around the 60,000-word mark. It doesn’t matter what the story is, I convince myself that I hate it. I’m positive I should do something else.

Anything else. A different book. Go be a high school English teacher. Move across country. Get a new dog. Literally — anything but think about this stupid book for one more minute.

I get burned out. It’s an occupational hazard.

It takes a long time to write a book. Months, at the least. And it’s a lot of concentrated effort on one single project that, even if you have a literary agent and you’ve been published before, you have no real idea will ever see the light of day.

What is burnout?

According to Lexico.com, burnout is the physical or mental collapse caused by overwork or stress.

Burnout is the voice in our heads that says we’re tired of what we’re working on. It’s boring. It’s stupid. No one is ever going to read this fucking thing, so why am waste time on it?

Burnout is idea that quitting now is not only okay, it’s the right choice. Because of course we should work on our shiny new ideas. I mean, they’re fun, they’re definitely going to be the next big thing, and we aren’t tired of them.

Burnout is what’s behind a whole sea of half-finished novels in the world.

Does it mean you’re not supposed to be a writer?

I’m a published author. I have a pretty good feeling that if I ever finish 312, my agent will be able to sell it. It’s a good story and I’m proud of it, even if today I hate its guts.

It’s kind of embarrassing to admit I’m burned out on this novel. Or that I ever feel anything less than giddy joy about writing. Aren’t we supposed to love writing, all the time? Especially if we’ve progressed into the part where we have an agent and our books are selling?

Burnout is a nice problem to have.

No, really. It is. This feeling, when I’ve been working on the same first draft forever and I just want to runaway from it, is the worst part of my job. But come on, my job is writing novels.

My job is writing novels. That means I’m almost unbelievably lucky and I have to finish writing novels, even if I don’t want to.

Being burned out on writing doesn’t mean I’m not supposed to be a writer. It doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to be either. It means we’re human. No writer is going to be giddy with joy over writing every single day.

Sometimes, it’s going to suck. There will be some parts we don’t like. That’s just life as a grown-up.

Working Through It

I wish I had some magic burn-out bean to offer you. Something that will make the hard parts easy. Maybe a promise that in the end, you’ll have a product that will sell a million copies and make you the next big thing.

If I had that bean, I’d swallow it myself.

The only little bit of real magic I know of is work.

Showing up and doing the work will, 100 percent of the time, result in finishing. Unless you’re writing a never-ending novel, show up to work every day and write a page or two and eventually you’ll be done.

When I finish this first draft, I get to do my favorite part. That’s revision. Not everyone loves revision as much as I do. For lots of writers, revision is their burnout zone.

For them, working through revision means they get to start something new.

For me, working through the end of the first draft, means I have something I can work with.

Work through the burnout. In other words, do it anyway. It’s okay if you’re not enjoying yourself. It doesn’t mean you never will again. It just means you’ve hit the hard part. And being able to work through the hard part is what separates the successful writers from the writers who never finish anything.

Know the Difference Between a Dip and a Cul-de-Sac

A few years ago I read a book by Seth Godin called The Dip. It made a huge impact on me. In fact, I’m a little obsessed with the ideas presented in it.

The dip is the lull in excitement that happens after the rush of starting something new wears off. On the other side of the dip is success. The dip, according to Godin, weeds out the people who aren’t going to make it. The hit the dip and give up.

A cul-de-sac, on the other hand, is a dead end. It’s what happens to people who don’t give up when they should.

I know. It’s a fine line. Do you work through burnout, or do you recognize it as a cul-de-sac and just give it up so you can move on to something else?

Here’s something I can tell you about the book I’m writing now. The one I’m burned out on and would love to never think about again.

• I was excited about it until I hit the mid-point.
• My agent and a couple of beta readers have read what I’ve already written and they like it.
• I know myself well enough to know that this last 20,000 to 25,000 words of a book are always the place where I risk burnout.

I’m in the dip for this project. Not my entire career. In fact, how I feel about this book has nothing to do with how I feel about writing in general. The hard part doesn’t have to be fun to be worth it.

Seth Godin has an exercise in his book that I’ve used over and over again.

“Here’s an assignment for you: Write it down. Write down under what circumstances you’re willing to quit. And when. And then stick with it.” — Seth Godin, The Dip

My ‘it’ is my novel, 312.

Under which circumstances am I willing to quit? Almost none. I can’t actually have a career as a novelist if I don’t finish writing novels.

I might have considered quitting if I’d sent my partial manuscript to my agent and she hated it. I trust her judgement.

I might consider quitting if writing this book were to really affect my mental health — but that would mean affecting me in a way that I’ve never actually experienced before, so it would have to be really bad.

The ‘and when’ part hits me hard. At some point I’m either going to need to finish this book or move on. I don’t want 312 to become a cul-de-sac I spend the rest of my life circling and never busting out of.

So — I let’s say I need to finish this book by the end of this year, or decide that I’m not going to and write something else.

Looking at that in black and white, it’s easy for me to see why I’m waking up every morning and just pushing through this burnout phase. Finishing is important enough to me that there is almost no circumstance I can name ahead of time that would make me abandon ship.

And that bit about the timeline? Yeah, that hit me where it hurts. I’ve spent far too long in this book’s dip. It’s time to get out of it, one way or the other.

Create your own daily writing habit.

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation, Rebel Nation, The Astonishing Maybe, and Center of Gravity. She is the original Ninja Writer.