I Wrote Another Novel; Here’s How I’m Planning to Avoid Burnout in the Future

 In the blog post I wrote this past June, I confessed that I might be through with writing novels.

Well.

A few days ago, I completed the first book in a new Christian holiday romance series. The 65,000 words took me about five weeks to write. As usual, the task began to feel like pulling teeth after about 30,000 words. As usual, I plowed through.

But this time, I didn’t resent the time. This time, I didn’t end up utterly hating the story and never wanting to see so much as a single word from it again.

Why? There were two things different this time around.

I understood my brain.

This is the first novel I’ve written while having an understanding of my brain. Knowing that I have ADHD, when I got to the notorious “halfway point,” I realized that I didn’t really hate the story. Nor did I think that I’d missed my calling, that I was going against God’s will by writing novels.

Instead, I realized that my brain had gotten bored with the story and wanted to do something different. I kept working on the novel every day until I felt like I was going to explode with the need for something different. And then, I took a day off.

Just one day.

I listened to somebody else’s novel. I watched YouTube. I walked around outside with no other aim than to be in nature.

If I’d needed to, I would have taken more days off to play. As it happened, the next day, I was able to sit down and get back to it.

Lesson number one: I can continue writing novels as long as, when in the middle of writing one, I give my brain a break to do something different when it’s begging me to.

I understood the cause of my burnout.

Related to that is the second thing that was different this time around. Because I understand my brain better, I figured out why I had my worst novel-writing burnout late last year and early this year.

I didn’t give myself enough time between books.

And my last series was the longest one I’ve ever written – six books, as opposed to my standard four.

Previously, I drove myself to complete a four-book series within a six-month time frame. Or less. I thought a two-week break in between novels was long enough.

Nope.

And my “Christmas Sisters” series being six books long, I pushed myself over the edge with it.

And because I’m apparently a glutton for punishment, a couple of months later I pushed myself to write the next two books in the “Pine Mountain Estates” series.

There are other self-published authors who are this prolific, even more so, and can just keep going.

Obviously, they have neurotypical brains.

Either that, or they’re at high risk of being put into a psychiatric institution.

To prevent any level of novel-writing burnout ever again, I decided, before I began writing this last novel, to write only four novels per year. I decided, as well, that I would take a two-month break in between each novel.

I don’t know why it took learning that I have ADHD to figure this out, because I enjoy creating YouTube videos, as well. Why didn’t it ever occur to me to write one novel, then take some time off to create videos?

I enjoy YouTubing so much, in fact, that the more I think about it, the more the idea of becoming a full-time YouTuber appeals to me. But back when I was forcing myself to crank out a minimum of six novels per year, I simply didn’t have the time or creative energy to be both a novelist and a YouTuber. I blamed it on perimenopause, then menopause. I blamed it on aging. I blamed it on my Irlen Syndrome.

The truth was, I’d been working against my brain.

With a full eight weeks in between writing novels, I can create as many videos as I like… including enough videos to upload during the several weeks that I’m writing a novel. Likely as not, most of my future blog posts will consist of YouTube videos, plus any script I wrote for them.

Life is finally starting to feel fun. 😊

Lesson number two: I need to work with my brain, not against it.

Until next time, be blessed!