- Burning Out (Many Times) -

Writing a story is challenging, and without a doubt, writing a story that has 50,000+ words within a month is challenging. It tests your limits and capabilities, especially if you’re someone who has never written something with that word count. A lot of chaptered stories here have word counts that exceed the target for NaNoWriMo. Whenever I see them, I am left in awe. People dedicate their time and energy towards making their ideas come to life, and they make me wonder if I will ever turn my ideas into stories and post them.

Writing 50,000 words is a difficult task to do, and doing it within thirty days means putting in time and effort. Looking back, I am surprised that I managed to put time towards this challenge. My private life does not exactly let me spend time on my hobbies. As much as I would rather do the things that make me happy and feel relaxed, I can’t drop everything and go to them. School and work are and will always be my main priorities in life, so for NaNoWriMo, I had to plan accordingly.

This is me figuring out how I will write while having a packed schedule.

I had a basic game plan for what I wanted to do, but making it come to life was difficult. During the first week of November, I would have to say that I was kind of on task. My daily goal was to write at least 1,667 words, and since I kind of had everything in my private life set in stone, the only thing I had to figure out was how to put time to write onto my busy schedule. I had gotten used to writing things with a word count of 1,000+ because of the writing class, and given my background in writing reports and essays for some of my technical classes, I assumed that reaching the daily target wouldn’t be too hard.

But boy did I overestimate myself for how I would perform during the middle and at the end of NaNoWriMo. (I will get to that part later on.)

Balancing the challenge with my main priorities was difficult, but I found writing to be the breather I needed from my responsibilities. Since I wrote late at night and early in the morning and whenever I was alone, I found writing to be a stress-relieving activity. I was lucky that my surroundings were to my liking (e.g., quiet and not packed). To keep myself relaxed while writing, I had things to eat/drink by my side. I don’t like to write without my essentials—food, basically—by my side. It’s nice to go to them whenever I’m low on fuel or pondering on a scene. I was pretty energized and I would say that I was motivated during the first week of the challenge.

This was me during the first week of the challenge. Writing was easy…at the time.

But when the second week rolled in, I approached a roadblock. And it was a huge one.

At the end of the first week, I had written about 10,000 words, which meant that I had about 40,000 left to write within three weeks. Around that time, I was dealing with a lot of things (in my private life), so it was natural that I put more time towards them instead of my NaNoWriMo project. My breaks were short and limited, but whenever I took a break from my responsibilities, I would open my writing program and continue writing.

But as soon as the program popped up, I would stare at what I’d written and not get any writing done.

As a quick recap, I burned the midnight oil many times while writing my NaNoWriMo story. Turns out, that was not the only thing burning out.

I was wrong on how I would perform during the second, third, and final week of November. I had thought I would be able to write another 10,000 within a week after seeing my performance for the first week, but while I was thinking that, I forgot to take my main priorities into account. There were times in which I had no motivation to write. I remember one day writing 5,000 words and writing zero words for the next couple of days. I remember closing my writing program after looking at it for ten minutes or after reaching the daily word target. I remember coming up with nothing (due to pantsing) and doing nothing after rereading the drafts of the first few chapters. I remember it all.

I hit a slump and slowly lost motivation to write. NaNoWriMo started feeling like a bothersome chore that wouldn’t leave me alone unless I typed a few words. There was a part of me that started nagging at me for getting distracted and increasing the daily word target. That part of me did not like it when I watched TV or took long naps to “recover” and get over the slump. That part started pestering me whenever I scrolled through my story and did nothing to it. It was battling for space in my head with the logical part of me, which was telling me to focus on my main priorities. My brain was going haywire, and it felt as if it was being fried.

What I’m trying to say is this: I burned out.

And I burned out a lot.

Burnout is real.

Everyone experiences burnout. Whether it be from school, work, or a hobby, we’ve all experienced the feeling of exhaustion and being overworked. I’ve experienced this many times from work and school, but this was the first time I had experienced it from a hobby. Recovering from work- and school-related burnouts was easy; all I did was take a nap and go to my hobby. But this time, a hobby was the one causing my burnouts.

How did I recover from them?

Well…

One way to recover from a burnout was to get away from the instigator and do something that would keep your mind off of it.

So with that in mind, I went to my other hobbies.

I have other hobbies, and fortunately, they have nothing to do with writing. I knew I wouldn’t be able to write if I continued writing when I didn’t feel like it, so I turned to the other things I enjoyed doing. I picked up knitting and found my mind becoming a calmer place, all thanks to me knitting and purling back and forth. I went back to drawing and created doodles here and there. I even went back to reading in order to get my mind off of the challenge and to enlighten myself with new ideas.

And then I remembered something.

And it was that NaNoWriMo was a writing challenge, one I shouldn’t worry about so much and one that wouldn’t change my life (in a negative way) if I failed to reach the word count.

Participating in NaNoWriMo was one of my goals as a writer, but completing it was not. I had completely forgotten the reason for why I had decided to participate in NaNoWriMo. Winning this challenge wouldn’t get me the things I wanted most. It wouldn’t lead to me receiving a letter of recommendation or a job offer. It wouldn’t get me to my dream grad school. It had nothing to do with my plans for my private life.

So when that hit me, I felt the challenge’s weight being lifted off of my shoulders.

And that slowly brought me back to writing.

To my surprise, writing became a more relaxing and enjoyable activity after I had come to terms with what I wanted out of this challenge. And in no time, I was back on the writing groove.

I did take a couple days off from writing after coming to that revelation. It was much needed after spending so much time on the computer, staring at its screen and typing for who knows how long. Even though it meant me playing the catch-up game, I was okay with it. I had to put myself before everything. I reevaluated my goals for this challenge because my responsibilities outside of AFF were more important and took up a huge chunk of my time and energy.

There were times in which I lost interest in my story, but that was okay. Everyone experiences that, so I shouldn’t beat myself over it while participating in this challenge. I had already accomplished the goal of me participating in this challenge; winning it was not one of my goals. It’s normal to lose interest in a hobby and burn out from doing too much. Breaks are needed and time will tell when you’re ready to go back to it.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that burnouts are real. Everyone experiences them and they will make them wander for who knows how long, wondering if their “fire” (their drive) will ever return to its majestic self after seeing it become a small flame.

I will say this: Yes, at some point, that flame will get reignited and become that fire from before. It may take a while, but it will happen. Everyone burns out, and they will overcome this slump.

And they come out better than ever.

Coming Up: Keep Calm and Write…and Don’t Look Back!

P.S. Yes, the next page is the last one before I post the TL;DR.

P.P.S. I apologize if this page seems disorganized. At the time I wrote this, I was burned out from family events and work-related things. As of late, I haven’t had a lot of free time to work on this blog post. But it’s almost done, and I’m determined to complete this before the end of this month. Thank you for reading!