To all our US readers:
Happy Independence Day!
This Week's Topic: Self-Care & Burnout
Burnout is caused by us caving to pressures both external and internal. There is no taskmaster like our own conscience, is there? It can make us gleefully ignore all the warning sirens of impending collapse with the intoxicating refrain of "just one more..." On occasion, we are blessed with the sweet, sweet glory of being in the Writing Zone. The words are flowing, the technology is cooperating, and there are no interruptions. We double our average word count for the day. We finish the WiP in record time. We publish the mss ahead of schedule. And then...
We can't come up with bupkiss.
Total burnout.
Whilst in the throes of burnout, the very notion of creativity causes us to wander off and drool in a corner. Our brains throb as if we were beamed with a fastball. We spend days, nay, weeks trying to recover from overachieving. Deadlines for other projects zoom past as we remain listless. We are such gluttons for punishment that we know the dire consequence awaiting us at the end of the Great Writing Jag, yet we sprint towards it, lost in our fugue, giddy at all we are accomplishing in the moment.
We promise to pace ourselves next time.
Another lie. We won't. We will rejoice whenever we stumble into the Writing Zone. We are willing prisoners of the cycle of overachieving and burning out. Naughty writers. We should take better care of ourselves. We should apply the lessons from all those self-care workshops. We should find the balance between creativity and healthiness.
Bwaahaha. No.
Not at the expense of our Beloved Story. Our fictional progeny take priority over our mental and physical well-being. Manic episodes? You betcha. Knowing better but not doing better? Ayup. Self-sabotage? Masters of it, we are. We will bitch about burnout and falsely vow to adhere to the principles of self-care, yet we will not change. There's another story crawling around our brains and we can't wait to tell it.
That's the real reason writers are weird.
