Friday, September 22, 2017

Let's talk about burnout.

I'm not honestly sure I know how to go about starting a blog post anymore.  It's been forever.  I've tried to put up new posts dozens of times over the last year, and it always winds up with me shutting it down because, "Who gives a damn what I have to say about anything?"

Maybe someone.  Maybe not.  But here I am anyhow.  And if you're here with me, then that's pretty cool.

I haven't been totally inactive over the last year.  I mean, social media-wise, yeah I've been gone.  Writing-wise, though, not quite as bad.  I've put some words on paper, I've come up with new ideas to be excited about, and I've even been able to get over the hump of my long (looooooooonnnnnggggg) case of burnout.  And that's what it was/is.  I got burnt way the hell out.  Burnt out on social media.  Burnt out on promoting my stuff.  Burnt out on the entire business of being an author.

There's no one reason.  I just... ugh, I just couldn't do it one day.  I knew that if I wanted people to read my stuff, I needed to tell them about it, but my fingers wouldn't let me hit publish on the blog here.  They wouldn't let me tweet about promotions, write about my process, or even send out an update to my tiny mailing list (which you can sign up for RIGHT HERE btw).

I simply lost the will to do anything other than write.  Hell, days where any real writing got done were few and far between, if I'm being honest.  When they came, though, it was like being able to breathe clean air again (which was also a hard thing to do in my neck-o-the-woods over the last couple months).  Being away from all the hubbub of social media and self-advertising, marketing tools and email-list-building seminars, well it's really given me a chance to fall back in love with the work I live for.

It's also given me time to realize that I need to pace myself.  Take a breath once in awhile.  I can't do everything at once, and that's OK.

Have you ever been burnt way the hell out?  How'd you deal with it?  Did you deal with it?

So, I'm starting slow.  I'm building a realistic schedule.  I'll probably post to this blog once every other week.  Maybe more, maybe less.  I just know I'm not letting it go any time soon.

Same goes for the mailing list.  I'm going to use all the tools I've found for building and working the mailing list, but I'm not going to try and do it all overnight.  It's got to be organic.  I'll do some giveaways here and there, I'll let folks know about stuff I've got coming out or when my books are on sale or free (Which happens to be the case for To The Bone right now, so go get a copy if you don't already have one!) and I'll use it in a way that doesn't make it feel like a chore for me.  I've got enough chores.

And then there's Inkshares, where I still have Clockwork Charlie listed as an active project, but have not touched in maybe a year.  I've touched the book, just not the campaign over there.  I need to get back to it, Clockwork Charlie is the largest and most in-depth writing project I've ever taken on, and I'm still so excited to see where it goes.  And Inkshares is still an exciting prospect to me, so I'll need to carve out a piece of time for that as well.

See how these little chunks of time start to grow?  I need to be better at managing my time than I have been in the past.

How do you do it?

No comments:

Post a Comment