On Christmas Eve 2023 (December 24th), I finally finished my rewrite of the first book of Spark and Blizzard (title TBD), my Young Adult Science Fantasy series. Drafting took me nine months of writing on and off, and this was after fighting a burnout period that lasted over a year. Getting to this point wasn’t easy, and several times, I’ve thought I would never get here. However, I made it, and learned many things about myself and my writing process along the way. I hope this especially helps creatives that have been through self doubt, lack of confidence, and/or extended burnout. Even if you aren’t a creative, you’ll get an idea of the journey to get this book to you once it's out.
Find your why
When I got back into writing in 2009 after a long hiatus, I wanted to write the stories that emerged out of my mind and put it on paper. Many of my tales had the storytelling elements, tropes, and character types I enjoyed when I was younger. I wrote faster than I could think at points, almost like magic flew off my fingertips. Even though it wasn’t the best quality, I was proud of what I wrote and wanted to share it with as many people as possible. Especially since these types of books were hard to find in stores (and still are to some degree).
As time wore on, I exposed my writing to feedback. In the process of wanting to improve, I stopped remembering the reason why I started writing. Instead, I adopted other people’s suggestions and goals as my own. Eventually, I aimed to please people more than make my own visions come true. In the pursuit to make what I thought were quality stories, I lost my drive. I believe that this self-enforced pandering to others and constant second guessing my work was the breaking point to my burnout.
While in the midst of burnout, I discovered Author Mindset Coach Isabel Sterling. The hour-long consultation revealed I was still passionate about my stories, despite my motivational drive running on empty.
I had to rediscover my drive. It turned out I already made a worksheet for that purpose for my Insider incentive, but never filled it out. So I went through it and reaffirmed some values I knew about myself, along with some surprises I never considered. I also realized while others can have great suggestions, I don’t have to take all of them in order to be a good writer. I can write based on my creative ideals first.
Especially in these days where many voices try to pull toward trends that might not fit your style, if you find that why, you’ll be able to maintain your creative drive and stand steady in the many creative storms that will inevitably come your way.
If you’re not an Insider yet, subscribe and you can grab my FREE motivation worksheet that you can use to work this out for yourself.
Trust yourself and your creative vision
Trusting your creative vision is probably the biggest lesson that any creative can learn in order to keep going. For years, I dismissed this for various reasons, mainly in the pursuit of “better writing”. To be honest, I would have avoided so much creative pain and would have likely stayed far away from burnout.
Instead, as a defense mechanism against poor writing, I belittled my own voice and opinions as wrong and inferior to what others was putting out. I assumed that the tropes and story elements that were popular were better because everyone raved about them. I tried to write based on the assumption that all the feedback was on a higher pedestal than my thoughts. This resulted in changing my story to satisfy what others wanted, and I lost my own voice in the process. The story I ended up with wasn’t mine, and not in a good way as the quality wasn’t increasing and my satisfaction declined. My voice was disappearing and with my confidence waning, I eventually stopped writing.
During that consultation with Isabel Sterling, it revealed that I had the voice for writing Young Adult and that my writing wasn’t all garbage and/or stagnant as I was led to believe for years before I burned out. I realized that my writing wasn’t all deficits.
That was further clarified a few months later when I listed my writing strengths. I found out that I’m good at setting, descriptions, action scenes, and characters. Also, I should spend time embracing and further enhancing those strengths, not just focusing on my deficits. The knowledge alone made me more confident in my writing skills and that my time wasn’t wasted.
I also made a list of things I love and don’t love in stories. I also made a list of must-haves and non-negotiables for Spark and Blizzard. On my YES list was “mixing magic and technology” because it’s one of my favorite tropes that I love to see in Sci-Fi and Fantasy. On my NO list was “sexualized characters” because it doesn’t fit the vibe of my story. Having that list of what I pictured in my story and sticking to it instead of trying to conform to storytelling elements I wasn’t in love with myself.
Drafting was more fun when I put my voice first. Much better than second guessing myself on every single world or doubting if that chapter is what “readers want”. As a result, this draft is probably my favorite in years. It feels like me, not simply trend chasing.
Go at your own pace
Over the years, my pace has gone from writing a rough draft in three weeks, to taking a year or more to finish, and everywhere in between. Especially when you’re surrounded by people that tend to draft fast and you’re struggling to get a few words down, the "you're falling behind" voices grow louder. During the summer, writing went at a sluggish pace, with several weeks ending with zero words. I’ve also learned that typing at “a super careful pace every sentence” style made writing harder and made me not write at all.
Oddly, what I learned the most is that as a Discovery Writer and a messier one at that, nobody’s checking your work as you draft. Planners and Discovery Writers typically have to do the same amount of work to produce something publishable, it’s that Plotters do much of this before, and Discovery Writers during and after drafting. When that clicked, my drafting speed went up exponentially. I also usually didn’t kick myself when I didn’t reach a word count goal, but appreciated the work I did.
Don’t kick yourself when you’re not going as fast as you would like. In the same vein, don’t feel like if you’re going “too fast” in the drafting process that it will never be quality writing. Most of the time, the pace you’re going at is just right.
Put a little work in each day
When the pressure was mounting on all sides, there were days where I wanted to avoid writing. My chronic procrastinator side loved delaying as much as possible and leaving things for “tomorrow”. And it kept happening, and two weeks later, I had no progress and felt worse with more guilt and made getting back into writing that much harder.
Once I realized the habit, I decided to put writing first every day and build an accountability system. I went back to why I’m writing this story and asked myself how much I wanted my dream to come true. With that, I did a little work each day, even if it didn’t add to the word count. Eventually, I had a draft.
Celebrate the small wins
For years, I believed I was always running behind and felt like celebrating small wins was over indulging and worked myself until I had nothing to celebrate. Isabel Sterling and others taught me that not celebrating will make writing feel more like a chore. They were right. I started doing small rewards when finishing that chapter or figuring out something huge. It made writing more enjoyable than it did when I wasn’t doing it.
Block out toxic advice
During my writing journey, I’ve encountered plenty of writing advice from various sources. Many of them were great and have helped improve my writing. However, some were detrimental with “one size fits all” and “my way or the highway” style deliveries, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I assumed because they were popular and had tons of writers looking up to them, these sources were beyond reproach. I also feared if I deviated from the rules, despite them not working for me, my writing would regress and my career would be doomed.
It wasn’t until I hit burnout and expanded my horizons through necessity that I realized how toxic my creative mind had become after attaching myself to those voices for an extended period of time. My writing had stagnated or regressed when the toxic advice dominated. My self doubt festered to a point where I threw out what I wanted to write in order to satisfy what the experts said was “good writing”. Writing became a chore and I was spending more time fighting with the voices floating in my head instead of in the world of the story. I was a slave to perfectionism.
Once I cleansed out the toxic writing advice and replaced it with more sound ones that worked for me, my writing quality and quantity improved by leaps and bounds. Some of my favorites I picked up in late 2022 and throughout 2023 for both writing and mindset were Isabel Sterling, Becca Syme, Golden May, among others. The common trait was that it was more about finding your own process and growing instead of binding yourself to a set of rules.
Don’t compare yourself to others
Partly due to low confidence and self esteem toward my own work, I ended up comparing my work to others as a way to find how I could close that gap between my skills and having published work. For a good while, I felt like everyone else wrote beautiful stories worthy of fans that gushed over their work. My work would never measure up no matter how hard I tried. I would either get ignored or it would just not be “good enough”. I had to step away from social media at times so that it wouldn’t get to me.
What got me out of this one was sharing my work with a few non judgmental friends and potential mentors. I realized many people had great things to say about my writing. This was a huge fear to overcome due to the harsh feedback I got in the past, compared to sparse positive feedback. I’m glad I did it. Slowly, I stepped into my own voice and I hardly fell into the comparison trap in terms of my writing and storytelling skills.
Find supportive writing friends
One root of my jealousy was that everyone else appeared to have supportive writing friends that cheered them on and gushed over their work. I was stuck in a toxic environment and mindset, where friendship had to be earned through near perfect writing, and I always fell short, if not ignored altogether. I felt that to get support, I had to change everything about my writing and appear more writerly in hobbies and personality.
And I kept feeling worse about it.
It took me years to finally find some writing friends and a community that stuck. Looking back, the key was sticking around and opening up about my projects than I had in the past. I also discovered more of what I wanted for a relationship with creatives. Now that I knew the signs of toxic relationships, it was quicker to drop ones that didn’t work instead of getting desperate. Plus, I didn’t have to change my writing or habits in order to be accepted. For me, this was likely the hardest lesson, due to my struggles with friendships in my past.
This rewrite was a major step up in my writing and my outlook on life. The joy of creativity has returned, and while revisions and writing further books still scare me, it’s not the overwhelming fear it was this time last year. There’s still a ways to go before I publish Spark and Blizzard Book 1 (Title TBD) but I feel this has better prepared me to be the author and person I need to become when the time comes. I hope it resonated with you, no matter if you’re a creative or not.
If you want to find out more about Spark and Blizzard as it comes to the world, check out my books page and subscribe to my newsletter to hear the latest updates first!