The title of this blog is something that came to my mind recently. I think it’s something worth talking about. I’m beyond the norm of how much writing I’ve done over the past 10 years and I’m going to answer the question, do authors burnout? Yes, we do.
This blog is going to be from my perspective, not anyone else’s. Every writer and author has their own journey so I’m going to give you my truth. With all that I’ve had going on in my life, I burned out by the fall of 2023.
That was the last time I wrote a book (crazy to think) and the books I wrote in 2023 were to be published in 2024. These were the last four books I wrote to hit my 60 book goal that I made years before.
I was writing books from 2015 through 2023. That’s eight years of writing, editing and proofreading, formatting, book covers, creating two websites, starting a podcast, writing blogs, social media content, book festivals and that’s just scratching the surface of what was on my plate.
Then let’s add family stuff, working full-time, traveling on public transportation back and forth to work, working out, maintaining my mental health (dealt with depression and anxiety in 2020), moving across the country at the end of 2020 to start a new life in a city and state I’ve never been to and learning about myself as a man.
When we look at writers and authors and the amount of work we do just to write one book alone is a lot. It takes a lot of mental focus, limited distractions, carving out time to do it in between everything else that’s going on in our lives, taking care of responsibilities and anything else that comes up.
It’s a journey from the idea of a book to publishing it. There’s a lot that goes on in between that. There’s brainstorming your story, outlining chapters, writing it out, editing the book, formatting it, creating a book cover or paying someone to do it, publishing your book, marketing yourself, there’s so much done.
Every connection we make with people, every book sale, every solid review, it means a lot to us. We love the support we get on social media, the reposts, when we connect with people at book festivals, it all means a lot.
When the burnout happened to me, I knew it was time to slow down. While I did write blogs for my website and record my podcasts, that’s less pressure than developing a story in its entirety. There’s a huge difference in crafting a two to three minute blog to publish or a ten minute podcast than writing a book.
Writers and authors do burnout, we’re human and not superheroes. When you wonder why it takes a while for another book in the series to release or a new book in general, we need time to decompress. We do have other things that are part of our lives.
Decompressing is necessary for me, that’s a given. The good part is, when you love what you do, you eventually go back to it and that’s where I am currently in my life. I will delve into that more in details in next Friday’s blog.
That’s my blog for today, thanks for reading, be good and go accomplish your goals!
Jamell Crouthers
Aquarianmind
Write a comment