Fighting (Writerly) Fatigue
By Celeste Ng
Image Credit: daveandrunning.wordpress.com
Creating on demand, always being on, always being told we’re not good enough, we’re not successful enough, and we’re not doing enough. I’ve been working this gig for twelve years now and I can tell you this much: the pressure never ends.
I understand the siren song of all the hype that’s attached to things like social media and networking, but I think it’s also the reason Publishing loses so many great writers every year. The stress of trying to be-all and do-all as a professional writer inevitably and negatively affects the writer as well as the quality of their work, which tips over the seven dominoes of writer self-destruction via creative fatigue: exhaustion, paranoia, burn-out, depression, isolation, renunciation and, finally, tossing in the towel.
Read the rest of the post, including one tactic that might prevent literary burnout, here.
You may be making life more difficult for yourself than is necessary by insisting that writing must be your primary source of income. Several successful writers, e.g. William Carlos Williams, Franz Kafka and Philip Larkin, never quit their day jobs.
Or you can be like me and set the bar low – and not think or yourself primarily as a writer. I was happy to be a finalist in the New Yorker cartoon caption contest. I also enjoyed receiving an honorable mention in the July 15, 2010 NYRB personals contest (the ad was a creative writing exercise, not a quest for a mate).