The Author Burnout Coach
Episode 01: WTF *Is* Burnout, Anyway
Hello writers and welcome to The Author Burnout Coach. Together, we will dismantle the burnout culture in book publishing and reclaim our love of stories. I am your host, Isabel Sterling, and this is episode 1.
[intro music]
Welcome welcome welcome, my darling writers. If you are listening to this on the day it drops, hell yeah for being here on Day 1! It’s also my birthday, so happy 33rd to yours truly. And, if you’re listening to this sometime in the future, a special welcome to you, too! It is *never* too late to free yourself from burnout, so I’m thrilled you’re here.
So let’s get right to it, shall we?
What the fuck is burn out and where does it come from?
When you google burnout in 2022, you get the following:
“Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands.”
Here’s how I see that showing up for writers.
For writers with a goal of traditional publication–which is the main focus of this podcast, as it’s where I live in the publishing ecosystem–pre-agent burnout settles in when you start to feel this pressured urgency to get an agent. The initial joy of writing has faded, leaving behind this feeling that you need to hurry and get ready to query and you can hang with your loved ones later cause this book has to get out now now now or you’ll never get there.
It’s very likely that you’re telling yourself that once you get an agent, you can slow down and all these feelings of not being good enough will go away.
Once you sign with your first agent–and I say first agent intentionally here. I literally don’t know anyone who is still working with their first agent, and that is 100% okay, but more on that in future episodes. You might celebrate this achievement but if you’re falling into burnout mode, you’re likely sharing your good news with lots of caveats.
Yes, it’s exciting BUT it doesn’t mean the book will sell.
Yes, it’s great BUT it took me 5 novels to get here.
Yes, I’m happy BUT the real hard word is just beginning.
Sure, each of these statements may be true, but all those ‘buts’ are born from a lifetime of messages that we’re not good enough. Those of us socialized as women, queer folks, BIPOC writers, we live in a world that constantly tries to tell us we’re not good enough. Without even realizing it, we start to dim our joy and accomplishments, too.
Part of that is a genuine fear response, rooted in a very recent history of visibility opening up marginalized folks to physical violence, but that’s a podcast for another day. All you need to know for right now is that your brain deserves some compassion here.
Ok, so then your debut novel sells to a publisher! Woohoo! Confetti raining down all over the place! Some fo the same caveats happen here–in won’t be out for 2 years, there’s still lots of work to do, I didn’t get the advance size i was hoping for, etc.--but then all that layers over the ways we’ve been taught to people please. We want to impress our editors and prove that they didn’t make a mistake in acquiring our book. We think we need to be the special author who only needs one round of content edits–just me? Maybe just me–and then the readers. Holy hell is that a mess for brains.
We know intellectually that we can’t please all readers, but it feels soooooo bad knowing that there are people out there who will hate our books. And then there’s all the worry about shitty sales and how this is our one and only chance and we’re going to mess the whole thing up if no one knows about our book and and and…
And if you managed to get through all of that without being completely worn out and exhausted and ready to hibernate for 10 years, there are still burnout traps post debut. Now, we’re not all shiny and new in the publishing industry. We have sales numbers to content with, and somehow, no matter what those numbers are, we’re in full panic.
If the numbers are low (and who the fuck even knows what ‘low’ is since it’s all super relative) we worry we won’t sell again.
If they’re amazing and we hit the NYT list and yahoo! Our panic is about whether we can sustain those numbers, whether we can grow with the next book, or if we’re doomed to be a one hit wonder. And then maybe you sign way too many contracts because you’re afraid of disappearing and then end up working yourself into full-on exhaustion that affects your physical health.
Friends, take a deep breath.
Even thinking about all this gets my body stressed out. My shoulders inch up toward my ears and my stomach twists in knots. Take a second to breathe that out and know that in this moment, you are okay.
Now, let’s pull apart those experiences I just mentioned and find the common cause of burnout in each.
Every situation is different. The facts about what’s going on in your writing life–the circumstances of your situation–don’t actual cause you to feel burnt out.
We know this because burnout can exist at every stage AND there are people who go through each step without over-working.
Two debut authors can have polar opposite experiences and feel the same level of burnout.
Which mean burnout–that feeling of intense mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion–comes not from what we’re doing but from the beliefs that drive what we’re doing.
Let’s use a reading analogy for a second.
Imagine you’ve stayed up until 3am reading. Do you feel exhausted and miserable when you finally go to bed or exhilerated?
Depends on WHY you stayed up reading.
If you stayed up because you were thinking: oh fuck. I need to finish this book before the class discussion tomorrow or else I’m going to look like such a failure in front of my professor. You probably feel like hell and are fighting sleep the whole time you’re reading.
If, however, you start reading a book and fall in love with the characters and spend all night going ‘oh just one more chapter. Just one more. Omg she did what?! One more one more.” suddenly it’s 3am and the book is done and you finally feel tired but so amazing at having taken that journey.
That even wilder thing? Those experiences can happen with the exact same book.
Now, again, dear friends. Do not twist this and use it to blame yourself for being burnt out. Fuck that noise. And also, it’s truly not your fault.
Imagine for a second that your brain is a computer. As you grow up, society implants a lot of software into that processing system. It does this through media, through family and friends, through our educational systems, and on and on. So then you go out into the world and running on all this software and you make the logical assumption that this is just how the world works.
We don’t question the messages that say we need to do things the right and correct way. We don’t even think to question who gets to decide what is correct. When the world tells prioritizes productivity above all, when it rewards being busy 24/7, we check our pre-installed software and go “yup, that sounds right!” and we ignore the messages from our intuition and our body that we need to slow down.
The good news is that we have the capacity to uninstall that software and put in new coding (or however computers work, that is so not my thing). That doesn’t mean it’s easy. There are thousands of lines of that coding in our brain, and sometimes they’re kind of jammed in there and a bit stuck and hard to pull out.
And it’s tricky because these thoughts FEEL SO TRUE. We’ve spent our lives collecting evidence to prove those things true. It’s not going to go away overnight. This is a lifelong process, but you can get some relief right away.
And that’s true awareness.
So my goal for you this week, is to become more aware of the messages in your brain. You can journal, you can talk them out with a friend, or if you’re super busy, just mentally notice them.
If your brain tells you that you’re being lazy or that you should be working harder, just notice those thoughts are there. No judging! Please, no judging. Notice those thoughts are there and just know that those come from pre-installed software that you can, over time, rewrite.
So, in summary:
Burnout comes from the reasons we do things NOT the things we do.
And the reasons are the thoughts we tell ourselves about WHY we do something.
Again, imagine the difference of staying up late to cram for a test vs read a book you love.
Your goal this week is to simply become AWARE of when your brain tells you that you HAVE to hurry, HAVE TO write more, HAVE to keep your publisher happy. Raise that awareness so we can start hitting delete on the bullshit lies our society has taught us.
Until next time, go take nap.
Oh! And PS! In celebration of turning 33, I release THREE episodes for you today. But seriously, nap first. Learn later. Bye!
