How To Cope With Writing Burnout

It happens to all of us at some point. It may be after you have completed 200 keyword rich articles on garbage bins or after you have done the umpteenth rewrite of an article on a subject you find really dull. Even if you're one of the lucky ones, and you enjoy what you write most of the time, at some point you face a moment when you just don't want to write. For a day, a week, a month or even longer, the profession that you rushed to embrace suddenly seems charmless. You feel tired, drained and mentally depleted, but you've still got to make a living. What do you do to recharge your batteries and get interested again?

Some of the things I have tried include knowing when to give up on writing and walking away from the computer. Instead of writing I can read a book, go for a walk, head to the beach, play with my daughter or have a nap. These are all things that are guaranteed to get my mind off the job for a while at least.

But what if the problem lasts longer than a few hours or a day? Sometimes I can feel the mental fatigue coming and I can plan my work schedule to allow some down time. That's the best option. At other times, deadlines loom and I have to write through the pain, vowing never to do this kind of job again. Of course, I will - there are times when any writing job is better than no writing job, particularly if you have bills to pay.

All of the best advice on burnout centres on recognising the signs - stress, tiredness, etc - and on changing the circumstances quickly, by taking a break somehow. What do you do when you face burnout?

Here are some other articles on burnout that you might find interesting:

• How To Deal With Burnout - including learning to recognise when burnout is approaching
• Recovering from Writers' Burnout - an oldie but goodie, where the advice includes taking a vacation - nice!
• Dealing With Professional Burnout - check out the quick quiz at the start
• Burnout - including the three sappers of creative energy
• 10 Signs of Career Burnout - exactly what it says on the tin
• More on burnout - if we're juggling then we might burn out, and who isn't juggling?
• Avoiding Freelance Burnout - the fact that you're freelancing can help you
• Burnout Self-Test - another great tool from MindTools

Finding Balance In Writing

Domestika has set me on the track of this meme about balance in the writing life, forcing me to face some uncomfortable truths about my life as a freelance writer. Of course, I aim for balance. I even have a written plan for the amount of time I will spend writing, with family and on myself. The trouble is that it all goes out the window when I have a deadline. Instead of finding balance, I end up sitting in my chair, typing my fingers off and watching my butt grow larger by the second. But for what it's worth, here's my plan for achieving balance in the writing life:

1. Family time – I try to go with my husband to collect my daughter from school each day. It gives us time to catch up on our day and then to get the latest news from school. I also try to make time a couple times a week to spend the entire afternoon with my daughter, playing, reading, watching television and generally having fun.

2. Exercise – I have lots of exercise machines, which I am trying to use. I go to a weekly salsa class and I try to hit the pool five times a week and the beach a couple of times a week. We also try to walk round the block a couple of times a week, which is more family time.

3. Social time – this is less frequent, but it involves spending time (non child related) with my husband, and also with friends (sometimes child related)

4. Me time – this is the bit that tends to suffer, but occasionally I splash out on a pedicure or spend half an hour reading something that has nothing to do with work or childrearing.

I don't think I've achieved balance yet, but I'm much nearer to it than I was when I worked as a lecturer, with long work days and nights.

Now, who shall I tag? How about Dana Prince, Katherine Huether, Productive Pen, gracepub and suejeff

Feel The Fear ...

Everyone's afraid of something. I've always felt confident about writing articles and I know that one day I will finish my novel. Yet despite writing lots of poems, I'd never shared them with anyone. Part of the reason was that I could still remember the voice of my snooty English teacher. She tended to play favourites, and I was definitely in the OUT crowd. But when she repeatedly slated the poems I wrote as assignments, I decided never to show them to anyone, a promise I kept for about 20 years. But then something changed. And it wasn't the poems, it was me.

A few years ago I had a friend and fellow writer staying at my house. She's someone I've known for years, whose opinion I respect. We did a kind of 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours' thing. I read some of her poems and she read some of mine. She thought they were good, and that gave me the courage to show them to a few family members.

Fast forward to 2006 and I still had done nothing with my store of 50 poems. (The only exception were a couple that were inspired by particular people. In those cases I showed them the poems before putting them away). I looked at them again and decided to risk submitting some of them to a couple of poetry mags. I heard nothing - still haven't. Then one day, I needed something for my blog urgently and I published one of my poems. A couple of days later, I got an invitation to join Todays-Woman.net (a writing group). I was elated, signed up and posted a couple of poems, to which I got a great response. Encouraged by that, I posted Gratitude here (97 reads and counting).

So when Katryn published a call for submissions to RITRO, I decided to go for it. It was hard to let my babies go, but to date, I've submitted three poems and all three have been accepted. I'll post a link when they're up.

My point is that if you want to get your work published, you'll have to show it to someone other than the cat and dog. So why don't you have a look at all your unpublished work, pick one thing you're really happy with and send it off somewhere. What have you got to lose?

Fifty Words: Writing Challenge

One of the key aspects of writing and journalism training is to be able to write concisely, highlighting the essentials of the subject you want your reader to grasp. This also works well when selling yourself as a writer.

If you've taken my advice and got yourself a website, you'll want to be able to sell yourself quickly to the thousands of visitors who spend less than 30 seconds on your page. That's why the home page of my website has a short version of my bio, under the heading 'In 50 words or less' (actually it's 47). How would you describe yourself in 50 words or less?