Do you think, “There is not a single damn good thing in the entire writing community? Or is it single good damn thing? Ugh! Whatever.”
Earlier this week, I talked about writing burnout and we did a monster podcast about it yesterday and we quickly spoke about the symptoms.
I just wanted to devote a bit more time to that here because if I look at the #writingcommunity on Twitter, it seems like either:
Every writer is burnout
Every writer hates writing.
That’s not a cool way to live.
And I know! I know! Sometimes it seems more cool to whine or hate on things, but you know what’s really cool?
Enjoying your damn life.
Enjoying writing if it’s your hobby, outlet, or job.
Herbert Freudenberger wrote Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement. Back then he defined it as “the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one’s devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results.”
So here are some questions to ask yourself if you are burnt out.
Are you super cynical about writing?
Are you super critical of your own writing?
Of everyone else’s?
Are you spending more time hating than even being apathetic? God forbid, loving?
Are you so totally apathetic about writing?
Is it really hard to start writing? Not in a writing block way, but in a consistent and longterm way?
Are you cranky with everyone?
Are you so worn out that you can’t even imagine lifting up your fingers, curling them over the keyboard and typing?
When you look at the blank page do you look away?
Can you not concentrate?
When good things happen in your writing world are you like, “Yeah. Whatever. Cool. Fine. Sure. NYT bestseller list. Okay. Whatevs.”
Do you think, “There is not a single damn good thing in the entire writing community? Or is it single good damn thing? Ugh! Whatever.”
Are you sleeping a lot all of a sudden?
Are you sleeping never all of a sudden?
Instead of writing are you drinking or eating or getting high? Um, in a way that’s different than before?
A key risk of job burnout is when you really identify with your work, when you get your identity from it and that? Well, that’s pretty hard for writers not to do.
We’re writing because we want to communicate. We’re writing because we want to change the world. We’re writing because we want to tell our stories.
It’s hard not to identify with your work when you are exposing your soul on the page, right?
Yesterday on the podcast we talked a bit about what you can do to deal with burnout. The thing is that burnout? It doesn’t have to last forever.
There’s an old article in Psychology Today that has great ideas about overcoming burnout. I hope you’ll check it out! And take care of yourself. You’ve got to love yourself through it and you’re worthy of love, okay?
What if it’s more than burnout?
Then you need to really take care of yourself. This world needs you and your stories in it.
Untreated burnout can lead to serious depression. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 is a place you can call (in the U.S.) for help from a trained counselor.
I learned a lot about who I was when I wrote this book. I’m not talking about who people think I am, but the actual me.
That’s because I did this book all by myself. I never do things all by myself especially not books. I write them. I have a team at publishing houses who tweak and market and create covers.
Not this time. This time I didn’t even show the story to anyone else. Not my agent. Not an editor. It was all me on my own.
And I learned that this is scary because there is nobody else to take responsibility if things go wrong.
And I learned I liked that.
What Inspired Me To Write It?
I wanted to step outside my own walls and do something that felt scary and vulnerable. This book felt scary and vulnerable. Why? Well, here is why.
Bad Guys Built on Real People
You know how sometimes people seem to be super nice and friendly and lovely. But then you see the mask drop? All of a sudden something shifts in their eyes and you think, “Holy crud muffins. This person could be a serial killer!”
There is a person in my town like that.
Actually, there are a couple of people in my town like that. When their mask drops and you see their true self, it makes you gasp.
The bad guys in this story are some of those people significantly tweaked and mashed-up together to create characters that are real, vibrant, and creepy.
Wanting to Mix Genres
When I wrote THE PLACES WE HIDE, I wanted to have some of the standard conventions of romance and thrillers, but give it that first-person-raw feel.
The Places We Hide by Carrie Jones
Wanting to Write Good Women Based On Real People
I also based a lot of the women in my story on women like me and my friends – quirky, struggling, real, persistent.
I wanted Rosie and her friends to feel like the moms you actually meet in coastal Maine.
Romance NEEDS
I like love. I like it when people find each other. What can I say?
I wanted to write a story like that.
High Stakes
I can’t help myself. If I’m not writing literary fiction, I tend to write about alien invasions and pixie apocalypses. I wanted to challenge myself to write a realistic story with truly high stakes.
What I Learned
I love writing kids books, but this was so much fun. And it was also really fun to step outside of traditional publishing, which I also love, and do it all myself. It helps me understand what my clients and author-friends who choose self-publishing go through. There’s so much responsibility and control that happens. It’s really a great adventure.
I learned that self-publishing is hard, but freeing. You don’t have to listen to other people helping you make your story better. You don’t have the safety net of the publisher. It’s just you out there – raw and vulnerable.
I learned that self-publishing is addictive. My aunt Athalie died this November. She was really glamorous and lived in California (We were in N.H.) and she was married to a celebrity dentist and then an Oscar-winning art director. She was an artist and believed in reincarnation. All of this was a very big deal to three-year-old Carrie.
She stared at me once as I was doing laps around our living room buck naked and announced loudly, “Carrie is an exhibitionist. Look at all that energy just flow right out of her. Wow.”
Nobody in my family has ever thought I was an exhibitionist. I was (and am) the person who sits on floors instead of chairs so that I can watch everyone else. I hide behind the camera and take pictures of others. I am a writer, for Pete’s sake.
Here’s the thing: Athalie was right.
Self-publishing pushes me towards that exhibitionist side. By marketing everything myself, by having the book be just my voice and my story, I show more of who I am to the world. And I’m okay with that. It’s scary, but all the good things are.
Truth Bomb
It’s really scary sometimes to put your work out there, or to just be who you are – the real you – unpolished sometimes, dorky, self-righteous, befuddled, passionate, fangirly, angry, sad, anxious you.
But it’s so much easier than living a life of pretending and of lies.
Authenticity is brave and vulnerable, yes, but it’s also pretty damn empowering to just exhibit who the heck you truly are to the world and let the world deal with it.
I hope you’ll be an exhibitionist with me. Exhibit who you are. Be who you are.
THIS IS WHAT IT’S ABOUT
Rosie Jones, small town reporter and single mom, is looking forward to her first quiet Maine winter with her young daughter, Lily. After a disastrous first marriage, she’s made a whole new life and new identities for her and her little girl. Rosie is more than ready for a winter of cookies, sledding, stories about planning board meetings, and trying not to fall in like with the local police sergeant, Seamus Kelley.
But after her car is tampered with and crashes into Sgt. Kelley’s cruiser during a blizzard, her quiet new world spirals out of control and back into the danger she thought she’d left behind. One of her new friends is murdered. She herself has been poisoned and she finds a list of anagrams on her dead friend’s floor.
As the killer strikes again, it’s obvious that the women of Bar Harbor aren’t safe. Despite the blizzard and her struggle to keep her new identity a secret, Rosie sets out to make sure no more women die. With the help of the handsome but injured Sgt. Kelley and the town’s firefighters, it’s up to Rosie to stop the murderer before he strikes again.
It’s with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed!
Order this bad boy, which might make it have a sequel. The sequel would be amazing. Believe me, I know. It features caves and monsters and love. Because doesn’t every story?
In the Woods
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
Don’t wait to start. Don’t expect lightening to strike or a muse to come down from the heavens.
Just write. Call it practice if ‘writing a novel’ seems too big a task. Trick your mind into being chill about it. If you want to do something, you have to do it. Don’t wait for permission. Just do it.
As long as it’s legal and doesn’t hurt other people. Obviously that sentence up there about not waiting for permission doesn’t apply to all things.
But it does freaking apply to art and writing and joy and fun.
Again, as long as your fun doesn’t hurt other creatures.
Back to the point. We wait all our lives for inspiration, for a prince or warrior-queen to come sweep us off our feet, for the muse to bless us with the perfect novel or poem or family or painting or child. But we have to put in the work. We have to be brave and actively go after what it is we want.
We might write a ton of sucky sentences. We might forget how to use a comma. We might fail and get rejected a million times.
That’s what makes the quest good though. That’s what makes the goal worth it.
So if you want to write a novel? Write it. Just get started.
If you don’t want to write a novel? Don’t.
Study craft. Push yourself. Think about who your story is about and how they relate to the world. Just write down the words you hear in your brain, the visions you see. Start it.
You’ve got this.
Writing Tip of the Pod:
Everything up there, man.
Dog Tip for Life
Dude. Hang out in the truck.
SHOUT OUT
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.
It’s with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed!
You can order this bad boy, which might make it have a sequel. The sequel would be amazing. Believe me, I know. It features caves and monsters and love. Because doesn’t every story?
You can get exclusive content, early podcasts, videos, art and listen (or read) never-to-be-officially published writings of Carrie on her Patreon. Levels go from $1 to $100 (That one includes writing coaching and editing for you wealthy peeps).
A lot of you might be new to Patreon and not get how it works. That’s totally cool. New things can be scary, but there’s a cool primer HERE that explains how it works. The short of it is this: You give Patreon your paypal or credit card # and they charge you whatever you level you choose at the end of each month. That money supports me sharing my writing and art and podcasts and weirdness with you.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
