Have you ever felt like your creative ambition failed you? Writing used to light you up, but maybe it doesn't anymore? The want is still there. You still want to write your books. You want to do all the things that you think is required to make that happen, but you can't. You just can't. The idea of producing one more thing, one more word, one more social media post, one more query attempt makes you want to cry or throw something through a window. You might wonder how writing morphed into something so draining. If you feel those things, I want to tell you that you're not alone. Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacy Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories. The one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Red It Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hi, writer. Welcome back to another episode of the Ride It Scared Podcast. I'm your host, Stacey, and today's episode 39, and it's a wrap-up episode. That's right, we are wrapping up season one, and we will be back again in January of 2025 for season two. But right now, I'm gonna take some time off for the holidays. This is a pretty hectic season for most of us. We're sliding into Christmas, and my daughter's gonna be off school for several weeks. So I have made the very grown-up decision about time as I'm in my 40s to take some time off. Now, I'm not a person who actually rests very easily, and but I have been convinced by the past three years of experiencing burnout that rest is actually necessary for my mental and physical health, and that resting makes me a better human, a better mom, and a better writer. So, yes, I have had to admit that I am not a machine. Probably had a few people fooled, but that's okay. So today we're gonna talk about the importance of resting, and I'm gonna share my story of how I wound up in creative burnout and what I did to get through it. So if you're like me, a person who struggles to rest and recharge your batteries, it might be a bit of a cautionary tale. And if you are someone who is teetering on the brink of burnout or maybe you're already there, I hope that it gives you some tools to work through it and know that it can get better again. But first things first, I want to thank all the amazing guests that have come on the podcast this year, to all the writers who were willing to share their vulnerable and honest lived experience about how hard writing can be at times and both the highs and the lows of the writing life. Thank you. Your willingness to do this normalizes the roller coaster for all of us. And thank you to all the writing coaches and editors and publishing industry experts who shared their valuable insights, expertise, and wisdom, as well as creative energy. I am grateful to all of you. And to you, listener, thank you so much for being here. I hope that you found something that has moved you forward in your writing journey, something that has made you feel a little less alone because that's what this is about. I feel strongly that writing a novel is an inside job. And what I mean by that is we face internal obstacles when we try to write the thing we wish to see in the world. And one of the ways to overcome those internal obstacles is by hearing other people's stories. I believe that by listening to other people's stories and experiences, it spreads hope into the world. I know it spreads hope into me. So that's my hope. My wish is that that is what the podcast has given to you. That it helped you find your fire, write your permission slip, lean into some different craft topics that you wanted to know more about, and in some way helped you grow and believe that you belong here and recognize that you're not doing it wrong. There's nothing wrong with you because this is hard. You're right where you need to be. And it's hard for all of us. And really that there's no magic bullet. If there's any magic at all, it's just in the practice and the perseverance and the patience that we put into the pursuit of something that we love to do. So thank you for being with me here in 2024. And I can't wait for you to tune into the next season. I already have a whole list of guests lined up, and we're going to be doing deep dives on character development and talking about how to write fantasy and mystery, build magic systems, write historical fiction, dig into research, discuss how to find readers and develop a readership and more. So I can't wait. But before we jump into me telling you about my creative burnout story and talking about the importance of resting, I want to remind you that another cohort of my small group book coaching for fiction writers will begin in January of 2025. This is a program for any commercial fiction writer who wants to start developing their story idea or continue developing an idea and write their novel in the coming year. So I would invite you to join a small but mighty welcoming group of writers who are working through the same story struggles as you while you get professional editorial guidance with one-on-one support and individual book coaching sessions with me each month. The space is limited to six writers, but you can secure a spot on the enrollment list right now. If you're interested, please go to writitsgear.co forward slash group coaching to learn more and apply, or you can check the link in the show notes. I will post it right at the top. Okay, writer, so now let's dive into our topic: creative burnout, the importance of resting. So let me ask you, have you ever felt like your creative ambition failed you? Writing used to light you up, but maybe it doesn't anymore? The want is still there. You still want to write your books, you want to do all the things that you think is required to make that happen, but you can't. You just can't. The idea of producing one more thing, one more word, one more social media post, one more query attempt makes you want to cry or throw something through a window. You might wonder how writing morphed into something so draining. If you feel those things, I want to tell you that you're not alone. You might be experiencing some creative burnout, or maybe you're close to it. And burnout's kind of a buzzword these days, and for good reason, we live in a pretty fast-paced, stressful world. And to me, creative burnout means there's no gas in the tank and there is no energy to get more. It's a state of mental, physical, and emotional fatigue brought on by chronic levels of stress. And once you get there, recovery can take months, even years. I know that I have taken for granted the incredible amount of mental energy that writing requires, and I'm not alone in this. Not to mention all the things that one has to do to learn to put words on the page and get it into the hands of a reader. And to imagine that one day something that we loved, something so thrilling, so adventurous, such as writing, could feel exhausting, doesn't seem possible, but it happens, and here's how, or at least here's how it happened to me. So when we decide that we want to become a successful writer, we commit, right? We commit to doing all the things we need to do. We grow the platform, we learn the marketing, we start to learn to be consistent with social media, we make meaningful connections and learn the skills and enhance the skills. We read the books, we focus on the craft, we listen to all the podcasts, we sign up for the newsletters, we take the workshops, take the ads courses, we join the community, write the query letters, write the story, rewrite the story, rewrite the story again. Then we find an editor, plan another story, write blog posts, build a website, schedule the newsletter swaps, make time to write, sacrifice sleep, all while joggling the rest of our life. The day-to-day job, the family, the partners, the pets, the finances. This was me to a T in 2022 and 2023. And suddenly, I realized that I'd gained 15 pounds, I was isolated, unhappy, and I was also resentful. I resented both the writing and anything that got in its way. And that's what happens. I put all my eggs in one basket and every one of them felt broken. So if you are experiencing this, please know I see you. I know how painful this is. And creative burnout can happen to anybody. I remember vividly on January 1st of 2023, on a day that was supposed to be filled with excitement of embracing new possibilities for the new year, or for some of us it's nursing a hangover. Not me. I don't drink now, but I used to. But I remember when I woke up that day, I woke up bone-tired. And I couldn't blame it on having a good time. I don't even think I stayed up till midnight. And I remember the idea of dragging myself to the computer for any reason hurt. Physically hurt. I wasn't creatively blocked, I was broken. My creative energy, which I define as my ability to make something new, was completely tapped out. I still had the desire. I still wanted to write my stories, I still wanted to do the amazing work I do with my clients, but I just didn't want it to kill me anymore. Something had to change. So, you know, when you become pain aware, you naturally seek the cause. And for me, it was pretty obvious I was the problem. Well, not quite. My thinking, which led to my actions, was the problem. My creative ambition and my drive and need to succeed had backfired badly. And some of you may know this, but for those that don't, I left a 10-year career practicing medicine to become a writer and a book coach because this is what I truly love to do. And I was determined to turn it into a viable thing. And my determination and drive drove me to overwork, to become an author, to become a writing coach. And that might not be the case for you or for others experiencing burnout. I mean, sometimes things happen in life that we have no control over, we don't see them coming, and we don't have a hand in creating them. Life can throw some pretty cruel curveballs that way. But for me personally, it was my drive and my ambition. And I had to figure out how to stay, stop taking on too much, working too hard, and denying myself any semblance of balance. So to do this, I got some help. I turned to the resources, many of which I've already missed mentioned on the podcast, such as Becca Syme. In 2023, I got really serious about understanding my strengths as a writer. I took her strengths for writing class. I read her book, Dear Writer, You're in Burnout, which is fantastic. I also reread James Clear's Atomic Habits for like the second or third time. And I found and read Stephen Cotler's The Art of the Impossible, which was eye-opening. And through reading those books and getting outside help from a lot of people who loved me, I started to climb back out of this hole of burnout. And now it's the end of 2024. So it's been almost two years. And I feel like I'm back on the beam. I feel more like myself than I have in a long time. And so I want you to know that if you're here in the space where it hurts to create and you feel like you can't stop because the cost is too high, I see you. I really hope this helps you. So here's what I did to climb out of this hole. For me, there were three phases of working through and past creative burnout. The first was I had to admit I had a problem and identify the contributing factors so that I could become willing to make some changes. And for me, my I had, I mean, so that meant I had to ask myself, like, what was I doing that hurt me and why was I doing it? I had to get really honest. So my inventory included things like constantly overcommitting, not asking for help, sacrificing sleep, working every second, ignoring my mental and physical health. And the cause? The cause was a lack of trust and a need for control driven by fear of failure and a misguided belief that I should be way farther along than where I was, that I should be over there instead of right here. Now, I don't like not having control. And the idea of surrendering, well, I give it a big thumbs down in general. But I had to get humble and I had to ask myself if what I was doing was working, and it was clearly not. And because of that, was I willing to change? And yes, I was willing to try something different because desperation had kind of beaten me into the dirt. So it was through that, looking, taking a hard look at what was really going on and what was driving me to work so hard, that I found some willingness to make changes. I had to admit that I wasn't a robot. And because I discovered I was the root of the problem, I could do something about it. So through that, I was able to move into the next phase, which I like to call the white flag time, the surrender phase. This is where I'm down, I've touted. I'm going to rest, pause, and reset and figure out how to lower my expectations. Sometimes we have to stop doing all the things, or at least all the things we can. And sometimes our body will force us to do that. That's what happened to me. I had to bow out for like a week. And I know that's not all that long compared to some, but my body flat hit the brakes. I had to let go of a lot of creative commitments. I had to quit marketing the book. I dropped work back to the bare bones, and it all sucked. And at first I was embarrassed. I didn't want to let go of those goals. And I sure as shit didn't want to tell anybody about it. I didn't want to admit defeat. But because I did, because I had to, it gave me some room to breathe. And because I did that, it allowed me to think about how I really wanted this to go. How do I how did I want my writing life to look? And because that, I started to fix some things. And I'm reminded of something that Becca Syme often says, that we often start out in the writing game at a sprint. And what we don't understand is that we're running a marathon and you do not sprint a marathon. So as I said, because of understanding that, I started to fix things. And if you haven't read Stephen Cotler's book, The Art of the Impossible, I highly recommend it. It was in that reading that I learned how to cultivate a restorative creative process. I was still able to work, but I found a way to do it that was regenerative. So these are the principles that I pulled out of the book, and there's three of them, and they work in tandem and they really helped me. And the first part was to identify what my feel-good mechanisms were and take care of myself. So just the basics, which I wasn't doing. Getting adequate sleep, making time for the damn doctor's appointments, getting a checkup, drinking water, uh, doing an activity that I enjoyed, going for walks, fueling my body, not with cookies, being in nature, leaning into practices of gratitude and mindfulness. And I know it sounds an awful lot like another laundry list of to-dos, but these things matter. And what I discovered is that a healthy body and mind and spirit are the keys to my creative juice. And so I would say if you need medical or therapeutic attention, please get it. Don't hesitate. Now, have I done or did I do any of this perfectly? Oh, absolutely not. Hell no. And I certainly didn't do them all at once, because you know, changing all the things is a recipe for changing nothing. So what I really focused on was getting more sleep and journaling in the morning instead of waking up to writer work. And I spent more time outside. So that was the first part. And the second was making some non-negotiable silence and alone time a priority. In his book, The Art of the Impossible, Stephen Cotler calls this non-time. So this is when I was off the grid. I had a little time to think and process how I was feeling. And I will say that finding these precious moments was difficult. Uh, I have littles at home, but it was doable. What it looked like for me was, you know, 20 minutes in the morning with my coffee and my journal. I've always been a really early riser. I get up at 4 a.m. But to make a little more room uh for sleep and to make those morning hours more restorative, I also went to bed earlier. So now I go to bed at eight o'clock, I put my daughter into bed, I get into bed at the same time, and I read for about 45 minutes and go to sleep. So I'm very proud of myself. I'm up to about seven hours of sleep a night for me, and that is good. So this non-negotiable time means, like I said, not checking my phone first thing in the morning, dedicating that time to journaling and reflecting. And for me, journaling is very meditative. So this alone time refueled me and it also opened my eyes to different perspectives. And it is a practice that I continue today and have expanded on by using tools like The Artist Way by Julia Cameron. If you haven't heard of that, it's a phenomenal book written by author Julia Cameron about several decades ago that's still wildly popular. And in it, she talks about two ways to cultivate your creative process and find your way back to your creative center. And one of them is journaling with morning pages, and the other is by doing artist dates. Really highly recommend. And I will put a link to it in the show notes. So the third piece is to set up creative boundaries. And slowly I rebooted my productivity system. So basically, in short, what that meant is I had to say no. I had to learn how to say no. And for you, this may mean you have to say no too. Unsubscribe, unfollow, delete the podcast, even if it's this one. I hope it's not, but delete the apps, pause the notifications, unclutter your proverbial plate, let go of all the items that are on your mental back burner that you have no time for now and you probably won't in the next six months. And then when you're ready, restart a really gentle writing routine and do your best to incorporate a spirit of play and discovery into that. And when I put these things in practice back in January of 2023, I think I was back to writing probably by March or April, just for 30 minutes, a few mornings a week. And that and that 30 minutes was included in my hour of non-negotiable alone time. So now today I try, but I succeed more than I fail to spend 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. is my non-negotiable alone time. I get seven hours of sleep. I don't check my phone first thing in the morning or the 600 notifications that I get. And I don't start work at three or four o'clock in the morning anymore. And also one of the most eye-opening things that I did was create a system to track my feel-good activities, my moods, and my energy levels, as well as the days that I wrote. And it's not fancy. It's like a bullet journal, but a lot messier. But it was really helpful for me to see what was helping and what was putting energy pennies into my bank, so to speak. My goal was to see which activities boosted my energy and creativity the most. And hands down for me, it was exercise, sleep, and reading. And I found that when I did these things consistently, I was more refreshed and more ready to write. So that was my journey into and through creative burnout. And I wanted to share it with you to give you a peek behind the curtain, because I'm just like you. I'm a writer and I struggle too. I'm a creative entrepreneur and I struggle. I'm also a mom who struggles. And yet I love what I do. I love writing and I love helping writers. And I will be damned if I will let my own hangups be the thing that burns me to the ground and keeps me out of this. I remember thinking in January of 2023 that maybe I would have to give up my fiction writing for a while. And that actually became my biggest catalyst for change because I absolutely refuse to do that. I did consider it for a moment, but it would have ripped my heart out because I fought too hard and too long and paid my therapist way too much money to get to the place where I believe that my voice matters, that my writing matters, that I have something important to share with the world and I want the world to hear it. And that is this that we are not alone, that we do not have to do this alone. So, no way, no how will I let my bad habits keep me from doing the work that I want to do in the world. Through all of this, I'm learning to work smarter, not necessarily harder. And I try to remember to apply the lens of my reality, which is I'm a mom and a primary parent, along with a business owner and a fiction writer and a podcast host and many other things. And I cannot be 100% in each area. My very good friend, Kim D. Filippo, who's also a business coach for Mom Entrepreneurs and runs the Both and Motherhood Cup podcast, said to me, Stacey, you cannot work like you don't have children and you cannot parent like you don't have a job. I think about that a lot. I can't be in all the places all the time. Something has to give. So I made some big changes, I let go of a lot of things, and I brought in some help. And now when I look back, I try to see what I went through as a lesson and not a failure. And I know that probably sounds cheesy and maybe it's just sounds all easier said than done, but it did take me two years to get back on the beam. And if you're in the middle of burnout or circling it, and the trigger wasn't any fault of your own, and you are in pain, you might not be able to hear this right now, and that's okay. I just want you to know that I know it hurts. No matter how we get here, it hurts. But it can be okay again. And still we have to find a way to stand back up, however slowly, and remember what our North Star is. We have to find a way to go again because this is the thing we want to do. This is what we love, and our voices matter. I get emotional when I talk about this because learning how to honor my creative energy has been really hard. Understanding what writing truly requires of me, as well as the many other things in my life, has been a really uncomfortable lesson in balance. And I bet you're no different. But if we don't learn how to do this, if we don't learn how to balance the creative energy that we need, the risk is that we resent what we love about writing, what we love about the writing prop process, what we love about our lives, the risk is that we stop writing our stories. So if you're in a place like I was back in 2022 and 2023, I want this to give you some hope. It can be okay again. Yes, it will take time, but if we admit where we went wrong, pause, surrender, gather resources, find our people, reach out for help, take small steps back into building healthy habits, as we learn from the mistakes of our past, we will set ourselves up for a brighter, happier writing future. And also if you want to download the creative habit tracker that I put together, I'll put it in the show notes. So as we wrap up season one of the Ride It Scared podcast, my wish to you is that you live well so you can write more because the world needs your stories. Thank you for being here with me. I wish you all the best for the rest of 2024 and beyond, and I will see you next year. And if you are interested in joining the next cohort of the small group book coaching for fiction writers with me, please go to writeitscared.co forward slash group coaching to learn more and apply. Thank you for listening to the Ride It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.