L.A. Garnett – Author

Burnout has been a buzzword for internet culture for a few years now, and while it can apply to a wide variety of jobs and work I feel like there has been a crucial misunderstanding of what burnout is as the term has filtered down to the masses. My understanding is that burnout is a specific term that relates to a state of being—this is emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by excessive stress. Do you have burnout because you don’t want to go to work today? No. Have you been in a job that has demanded your time, effort, and sanity with very little in return, and you haven’t been able to get out of bed on the weekends because of it? Yeah, that’s probably burnout.

For indie authors, this stress is largely internal. We set our own deadlines, our expectations of ourselves, and are reviewing our own work and performance constantly. It’s a hamster wheel of engagement, creation, and promotion. It isn’t the writing that causes burnout—it’s the stress of fulfilling our dreams. We can picture it, and see other people doing it, so who is to say that can’t be us if we give just a little more effort.

That’s the fatal flaw of social media—comparison—and I often see writers joke on Threads that if they could just live alone in a cabin somewhere, with internet and a word processor, they’d be happy. I’ve made the same joke!

So, for me, preventing burnout is a matter of managing my expectations. I work a full time job and have a small child at home—there is no way I’m going to be cranking out full length books every six months. Trying to do that would be a recipe for disaster; at the very least, I’d be giving up precious sleep. All I can do is chip away at my projects, and make sure there’s always something percolating. Right now I’m in an enormous upswing in my productivity (when it comes to writing) so I’m trying to harness that energy so when the pendulum swings I have a few things to carry me through until the next time.

The Spiraling, my debut fantasy novel, is now available! Check out my books page to learn more. You can purchase it wherever you buy books online.