How to Avoid Writer’s Burnout

The Amorphous Nature of Full Time Writing Leading to the Inability to Fully Unplug

Full-time, freelance writers often feel the need to constantly write, think about what they are going to write, or promote what they have written, making it seem impossible to ever fully leave their work behind.

I started feeling sick last night, tossed and turned finally falling into a sweaty sleep around dawn, only to awaken a couple of hours later feeling like I’d swallowed a mouthful of razor blades. A cough was also starting, so every time I tried to doze I woke up hacking and gasping for air.

I gave up and got out of bed and made myself a cup of coffee (yes, I know you shouldn’t drink caffeine when you’re sick but we all have our vices). Since my mind was so hazy and I felt so miserable I decided to let myself play video games, watch Netflix and nap. I figured that since I always seem to feel more awake and am more productive starting around late afternoon there was always the possibility I’d perk up enough to work later.

But there was no solid plan, just the idea of working at some point, should I feel well enough to set down some words or maybe promote some of my recent articles. Either way, I was definitely planning a light day.

I made the coffee, and set myself up in bed with the mug on my bedside table. My tablet was to one side and a couple of notebooks and pens to the other (just in case, writers always keep notebooks and pens around “just in case”). The computer was down by my feet on the lap desk (again “just in case”), and a bottle of water was on the floor. Phone in hand I was ready for game time.

Then that niggling little voice at the back of my mind spoke up:

“If you are well enough to get up, make coffee and play games, you are well enough to work.”

I dismissed it, recognizing it as a throwback to my childhood. Whenever I was sick, my mother made me get up anyway, shower and get dressed. Then she’d say, “If you can get up and get dressed, you are well enough to go to school,” and off I’d go.

Now I just slapped that little voice down.

“I’m sick, and if I want to relax for a while, I can do that and you have nothing to say about it.”

So there. I started up a game and began clicking colored shapes, trying to make the water flow through the passages until it hit all the fireflies.

As I started on my fourth try at the level I was on, I noticed that niggling voice which had been just a tickle before had ramped up and moved fully into my consciousness.

— You could at least promote a couple of stories on Facebook, do some reading, support some other writers. That doesn’t take a ton of mind power.

Shut up. I’m sick. I can take a day or part of a day off if I want to. I’ve been posting almost every day for a couple of months. It’s not like I’m just being lazy!

— But you know you could write a little something, start something, work on articles you started and never finished.

Stop it! You’re messing up my game and I only have one life left!

The voice stayed quiet for the time being. But it kept vibrating, sort of humming to make sure I knew it was still there, to annoy me while being able to innocently deny it was doing anything of the sort. That’s the way it wanted it huh? Fine. Game on. I lost the last life and switched games. Now I was trying to match colored pieces to win points to buy fish and decorate their aquarium. I started to hum to tell the voice it wasn’t bothering me even a little bit.

— If you were working in an office, you wouldn’t have taken today off. You never used to take a sick day unless you literally couldn’t make it out of bed.

But I’m not working in an office. I’m my own boss.

I kept humming. I kept playing. I opened all the clam shells, freed all the pearls and won the level.

— It’s almost 11:00.

I had set an arbitrary timeline up in my mind based on what may have been just a superstitious idea that if I published something new by 10:00 and did some self promotion and reading then I’d have a good day in terms of reads and engagement on my articles. Sometimes it took a bit longer so I gave myself a some leeway, until 11:00. After 11:00, if I hadn’t done much, I started getting antsy. By noon I started feeling the day was lost and definitely by about 1:30 pm if I hadn’t been productive I would feel the sudden need to make a major course correction for the day. But I never felt that I could make enough of a difference that late.

Maybe the voice would shut up if I took a nap. I haven’t been sleeping well for the past week and adding the cold to the exhaustion was making me miserable. Surely it would leave me alone if I was sick enough to sleep during the day.

But this just made matters worse. I haven’t been able to nap during the day for several years even when I haven’t slept at all the night before. Though my throat wasn’t quite as sore, it still felt like maybe one razor blade was left over.

— You’re just laying there awake. You could be doing something productive.

. . .

— You know you get the most views when you post and promote in the morning. It’s already bordering on too late for today.

. . .

You numbers and earnings have been down. Can you really stand to see them go down further? Once they build momentum in that direction . . .

Oh, alright already! You win!

I sat up and pulled the computer toward me.

The Inability to Fully Unplug

When writers finally make the decision to quit their day job and start writing full time, it can be elating. And for a while that feeling usually holds. But then it hits — this is my day job! As soon as that happens there is often a lot of pressure. Pressure to succeed, to gain an audience and a lot of followers, to earn enough to pay the bills, to build a brand and reputation. While many people have the desire to break out of the blogging or personal essay mold to write a novel or volume of poetry, this frequently takes a back seat.

Soon, a pattern emerges. Write new material, market and promote new material, refashion older work so it can be republished, engage with other writers and their work so they will reciprocate, network and write yet more new material.

The “write new material” part is often the one that becomes seemingly impossible to turn off. This is what will ultimately earn us our reputation, gain us an audience and following with an eye towards earnings. And since the goal of “create more content” has no specific goal markers there is no definable endpoint when we can say, “Finished.”

This means we are never finished. Also, since writing is something that can be done anywhere, most of us carry a notebook at all times for those “ah ha” moments. When we plan to do something else, at the back of our minds there is still always the possibility that we’ll end up writing something. Many of us even leave notebooks by our beds when we go to sleep in case we wake up with a sudden idea that we fear we’ll forget by morning.

While the possibility of coming up with the next great idea can be exciting, it can also often be stressful because we never turn our writer’s brain off. Not only can we not, “leave work at the office” because there is no office, we also can’t leave it there because our office goes everywhere with us.

When we aren’t writing we think we should be and when we are writing we think we should be more productive. The feeling of constantly needing to produce can end up burning us out. What has become a need to take time off, just leads to even more pressure and a sense that we aren’t doing what we should be. Writer’s are nothing if not hard on ourselves

How Can We Unplug?

Downtime replenishes the brain’s stores of attention and motivation, encourages productivity and creativity, and is essential to achieving our highest levels of creativity and performance.

So with that in mind, try these tips to increase your odds of unplugging from you writing mind.

• Learn what writing burnout feels like for you so you can predict when it is approaching This is the most important step of all. If you wait until after you are burned out, it will take a lot more time to figure out how to start writing again and enjoy it. What goes into writing burnout is different for each of us and we all have different signs. For me, when I start writing later and later in the day this is a key sign that I there is dread in my mind when it comes to writing and dread leads me nowhere good.
• Schedule a break before you burn out If you feel that you are starting to become stressed, determine to take a day off before things get to the burn out stage. Taking an hour or two off a day if possible to decompress can be a great preventative as well as a restorative. If you can do that, try taking at least a half a day off a week and go somewhere without any writing tools. Always having a notebook with us keeps us primed for viewing everything we experience as a possible article. Without anything to write on, we let our minds go elsewhere without worrying about whether everything would make a good story.
• Let people know you’re taking time off This can help in two ways. First, if people know then they are less likely to bother you with work related issues. Whatever it is, it should be able to wait. While Doctors may have medical emergencies I have yet to hear of a writer having a writing emergency they have to tend to. Letting people know can also provide support should you slip back into writing as they can encourage you to stop writing for the duration of your break.
• Get Over the Guilt It’s common for us to feel guilty when we aren’t writing. We need to remind ourselves that we are creative people. Time off is critical to our ability to write well, be productive and succeed as creative entrepreneurs.

Take Away

If we start burning out regularly, run out of ideas, lose the motivation and the desire to write as well as the joy we once felt when we wrote we will we may find that it doesn’t seem worth it anymore. Before getting to the point that you decide the way you feel is an indication you shouldn’t be a writer, try taking breaks regularly then come back to it and see how you feel. Investing in some time off can make the difference between continuing to build the writing life you want and mistaking temporary burn out as a sign that writing isn’t for you. Taking breaks away from your writing is an important way of investing in your future — it’s that simple.

Natalie Frank (Taye Carrol) has had work featured in Haunted Waters Press, Weirdbook Magazine, Siren’s Call Publications, Lycan Valley Press and Zero Fiction among others. Her poetry has been featured in several anthologies. She is Editor for 1-One-Infinity, The Partnered Pen and One Table, One World and is Editor in Chief for Promposity and Mental Gecko. She is also the Managing Editor for Novellas and Serials at LVP Publications.

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