Healing Writer Burnout

Writer burnout is a cousin to writer’s block, with a few key differences. Both states leave you feeling like you should write, you need to write, but you just can’t. Writer’s block is slightly easier to tackle. There are detours—ways to reset your brain—so you can get back on track. But burnout? It’s a deeper kind of writing exhaustion. Maybe you consistently have to write on deadline or with a due date nipping at your heels. Maybe you’ve been struggling with the same block for months. Or maybe you’ve been working on the same manuscript for years, and feel like you just can’t look at it anymore. I’ll share five tips that’ll help you recover from writer burnout.

Writer burnout is the worst, but you can overcome it!

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UNPLUG FROM YOUR PROJECT

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes … including you.” —Anne Lamott

First thing’s first. Take a moment to analyze how you’re feeling about your project. If you’re experiencing a mild case of writer’s block, I’d encourage you to try and push through it. Sometimes it’s necessary to bear with the discomfort until you hit a breakthrough. Check out Jen Petro Roy’s post on writer’s block for tips on pushing through.

However, if you’re reading this blog post, you might be at the point of extreme frustration—the words on the page aren’t making sense anymore, you’re cranky, and you’re crying a little bit (or a lot).

For folks experiencing this kind of stress, the best thing you can do for yourself and your project is to unplug. This may seem like obvious advice, but when your writing project has you in a state of turmoil, it can be hard to see anything clearly—including the fact that stopping is, in fact, an option.

If you’re writing on deadline, you may not have the option to step away for very long—but you can probably set it aside until tomorrow. Give yourself the opportunity to binge watch some TV, eat some nourishing food, hydrate, and get a good night’s rest. Things will look less dire in the morning, I can almost guarantee it.

If you’re not writing on deadline, give yourself permission to step away from your project for a period of time, whether that’s a week, a month, or longer. I did this recently with my WIP during a course of intensive revision. I got to a point where I just felt kind of lost, so I put it aside for a good three months. Now I feel re-energized about my story and have new ideas that got me un-stuck.

STICK TO A DAILY WRITING ROUTINE

“Nature never hurries. Atom by atom, little by little she achieves her work.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once you get unstuck from the worst of it, try to develop a routine that helps you avoid writer burnout in the first place. Commit to doing a little bit every day rather than leaving it all till the night before your deadline. I’ve found that aiming to write for an hour every day is what works for me. I’m a night owl, so the hours between nine and midnight seem to be most productive for me, writing-wise. Play around with your schedule and see what works for you.

From my experience, you need two ingredients to create a successful writing routine. First, you need to write even when you don’t feel like it. Take me, for example! I did not feel like sitting down to write this evening. But once I got my butt in the chair, I was able to get into a groove. And the fact that I’m chipping away at this blog post means I won’t be struggling to finish it on Sunday night. Writer burnout avoided!

The second ingredient? Be kind to yourself if you do miss a day. We’re human beings, not writing robots—so go easy on yourself if you need to take care of what life throws at you. And even if life hasn’t thrown you a curveball, sometimes you just need time to binge watch Netflix. Recharge your batteries and then get back into your writing routine when you’re able to. 

If you need more guidance, GSC editor Rhiannon Richardson wrote an excellent article on developing a daily writing practice.

ALLOW YOUR “BACK BRAIN” TO DO ITS THING

“So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.” ― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

Another strategy for mitigating writer burnout is intentionally giving your back brain space to do its work. I think of my back brain as the less restrained part of my consciousness, where ideas flow more freely. I find I’m able to access this part of my brain when:

• I’m falling asleep (seriously, I’ve had some of my best writing ideas when I’m on the edge of consciousness);

• I’m doing something repetitive like walking or knitting;

• I’m absorbed in another mindless task that allows my brain the opportunity to wander—like doing dishes or tidying up around the house.

Here’s the real trick though: when you’re engaged in one of these mindless or repetitive activities, resist the urge to put on a TV show or podcast. Embrace the silence and the opportunity to be alone with your thoughts. Then tune into your story world—specifically any areas where you might feel stuck. Give your brain free reign—without distractions—to work through the possibilities. The next time you sit down at the keyboard, you’ll have a roadmap for where to go next.

LOOK FOR THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE

If you’re an overthinker, it can be a contributing factor in developing writer burnout. This tendency to unnecessarily complicate things is something I struggle with personally, and it impacts all areas of my life. When I’m ordering at a restaurant, when I’m re-organizing my pantry, when I’m deciding what to wear, and especially when I’m writing—I dissect and deliberate to the point of exhaustion. I have never related to a fictional character more than Chidi Anagonye from The Good Place. He turns the simplest thing—like which flavor of muffin to order—into an existential crisis.

But sometimes I wonder: does it have to be as hard as I’m making it? I was talking to a friend about this recently—how my brain snarls everything into a tangled ball of yarn that I have to pick through before I can make any kind of decision or produce any kind of results. He said to me, “If you know this is a thing that happens, can’t you identify it when it’s happening to reel yourself back in?”

That was a lightbulb moment for me. True, I can never completely rewire the way my brain works. I’ll always be an overthinker to a certain degree. But if I can slow down enough to recognize that it’s happening—that I’m overthinking and overcomplicating again—I can step back, take a deep breath, and analyze the problem in front of me. Do I need to freak out when I realize that a detail I changed in chapter 15 impacts the story foundation I laid in the beginning? Do I need to drop everything and re-read those first fifteen chapters to check continuity? I may want to, and I’ve certainly done that in the past, but it’s not a good use of time. Here’s a better use of time: First, slow down. Breathe. Step away from the keyboard for a moment. Does changing that single detail really mean you have to overhaul swaths of text? Or can you rectify it with a few simple changes?

It reminds me of an episode of Changing Spaces—anyone else remember that show? Neighbors swapped houses and were tasked with redecorating a room in the other’s space. They’d always get a challenge to use some weird material in the final design. In this particular episode, they were tasked with using some hideous fabric—really garish and impossible to coordinate with any room decor. One team agonized over it—twisting it into a wreath, spray-painting it, pummeling it into submission. They stayed up until the wee hours of the morning overthinking the crap out of this challenge.

The other team? They simply rolled the fabric into a discreet tube, put it in a vase, and stuck a flower in the middle. They were done in minutes, and got a good night’s rest. And they won the challenge.

This scenario is so instructive to people struggling with writer burnout. Are you twisting and pummeling? Or are there simple solutions sitting right in front of you?

THE REAL CAUSE OF WRITER BURNOUT

But sometimes there aren’t simple solutions. I don’t want to diminish a fundamental truth about writing: writing well, making it look easy—it’s hard. It takes a ton of practice to develop the muscle that makes it look effortless. And like with any athletic pursuit, you have to endure a certain amount of discomfort to achieve excellence.

So how do you learn to tolerate or re-frame the uncomfortable feelings that come with doing something hard? After all, I think that’s what writer burnout amounts to: it’s the fatigue that’s naturally part of pursuing excellence. And what I keep coming back to is that a meditation or mindfulness practice might have a transformative effect when the burnout is strong.

PRACTICE MINDFULNESS TO AVOID WRITER BURNOUT

Ryan M. Niemiec of Psychology Today says, “Mindfulness is the self-regulation of attention with an attitude of curiosity, openness, and acceptance.” Great, that sounds awesome. But how do we put this definition into practice?

I’d recommend starting small. Try listening to a one or two minute generic meditation on YouTube before starting a writing session. Besides helping you to focus, it’ll also serve as a reminder not to overthink things as you’re writing. It’ll help you go into the day’s work with the mindset that you’re going to strive for simple writing and simple solutions.

If you’re interested in digging deeper into the intersection of mindfulness and writing, there’s a ton of content out there. Try keyword searching “mindfulness and writing” on Google, YouTube, and Amazon (or your library catalog) for a look at what’s out there. Here are a few selected resources you may want to check out.

• YouTube video: How Mindfulness Can Transform the Way You Write | Alexandria Peary | TEDxSalemStateUniversity

• Blog post: Writing Tips: How To Use Writing As A Meditation Technique

• Book: Writing as a Path to Awakening: A Year to Becoming an Excellent Writer and Living an Awakened Life

Writer burnout is the worst, but you can overcome it! Let us know in the comments if any of these tips work for you, or if you have tips of your own to share.

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Want to be the kind of writer every literary agent dreams of? In just five months, you could have a complete, polished draft in hand—along with a plan to position it in the market.