Coming off of the massive writing push at the end of last year, I had high hopes for 2019. After all, what better way to continue the push towards publishing than to kick off my new WIP and be just as focused?

That didn’t happen.

Over the last month, I’ve only managed two chapters on my latest novel. As hard as I’ve tried, writing inspiration seems to come in short bursts, replaced by the creativity to do pretty much anything else.

At the end of February, I started a YouTube channel as a supplement to the blog (and today I’m uploading the longest video yet). I also started updating the video game blog I haven’t touched since 2016 (though, I’m doing that mostly to retain all of my writings about games in one place).

All of these things were easier than writing and that worries me. After my 50k word push at the end of 2018, I expected to be a little bit burnt out. But not for this long.

Even though I’ve spent a good amount of time outlining my newest WIP, and feel very comfortable about how it will unfold, I can’t seem to open the Google Doc containing the first two chapters and make any significant progress. I keep telling myself I need a break from writing, but I keep messing with Infinity’s Heir. And beta reading work from other authors. And working on YouTube videos. And diving head first into the world of writing (online forums, twitter, etc.).

Maybe I am a little burnt out, but not in the way I expected…

As I write this, something comes to mind – I’ve spent every spare second of time in 2019 driving towards the singular goal of whipping something into shape, that I haven’t been spending much time enjoying the journey. Sure, I’m excited about my newest WIP, but the thought of working on it sounds more like, well, work than the adventure it should be.

And that brings me around to something I wasn’t expecting to write about today…self-care.

It’s really easy to slip into a habit of repetition that pushes everything else to the wayside. And I think that’s what the writing push at the end of last year wound up doing. For me, finishing Missing Parts was the most important thing in the world. I promised myself it would be done by the end of the year, so I forced a writing process more stringent than anything else I’d done in the past. The hard deadline of the end of the year forced my hand.

I made it, but at a cost I’m not realizing until now.

Writing isn’t a race, but I turned it into one, and the consequences of that decision are manifesting in my desire to be creative in other ways. Don’t get me wrong, I’m having fun, but all of that fun is tinged with a thin strand of underlying guilt. I could be writing. I should be writing. But the itch just isn’t as strong as it was last year. Not now, anyway.

That said, I have no doubt it will strike again. I’m thoroughly enjoying getting Infinity’s Heir ready for RevPit (as well as a few other opportunities), and I’m looking forward to submitting Aiko’s Dive to WriteMentor again this year for some much-needed love and attention. Even Beta reading has been a blast. All of these things are writing related, so I’m not worried about the creative process coming full circle.

The take away from all this is that, sometimes, a break is necessary. I thought it would be fine to push myself to write a thousand words a day for two months straight, then dive into 2019 with the same fervor. I was wrong. Even though I didn’t know that, my mind did, and it guided me towards activities that would be rejuvenating rather than draining.

Self-care is a very important part of any process, and I think it’s really important to pay active attention to it. I kind of pushed that to the wayside at the end of last year, hoping that I could make up for lost time at my own expense. Had I continued the focused push forward, the burnout I experienced might have been that much more acute.

Even though I feel good about finishing Missing Parts, I’m not planning on pushing myself like that anymore in the future. There’s plenty of time in each year and I’m going to spend as much of it doing things that I enjoy, even if that means backing off of writing a little bit. That said, I still plan on sticking to my monthly blog posts, writing for imperium.news, and working on my WIP. I’ll just be doing it all at a pace that feels more fun.

More soon!