Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright

Hi there! I’m Josh Lanyon and I write m/m romance — usually within the context of a mystery or action-adventure novel. In fact, I have a brand new m/m comic mystery-romance coming out through Samhain in a couple of weeks. First book in a brand, spanking new series. Anyway, more about that another day. I was recently talking to my friend ZA Maxfield, another newish Samhain author, and she was asking about what I do to keep the writing fires burning bright now that I’ve been writing for about a million years. Or what feels like a million years — which is kind of the point.

I thought this was a great question because, frankly, I’ve teetered dangerously close to burnout a couple of times during the past year. Now when I tell you that I’ve already written more than 200K and it’s only May, I think you might get an inkling as to why I occasionally feel like the creative well is running dry.

So the first thing I’m going to ask with this post is that everyone out there — writers or anyone who has ever dealt with burn out — could you pop into the comment section and offer up your best tip for rejuvenating yourself? I think that would be really helpful to all of us.

As for myself, one of the best things I’ve hit on is building tiny breaks into my schedule. Like a lot of creative types, I find that I work in bursts of enthusiasm and energy. I go full bore for long periods of time, and then…I got nuthin’.

It’s at those points that I’m learning to give myself permission to slack off.

It goes against the Puritan work ethic I was raised with, I admit it. But the fact is, that I’ve discovered that building these little breaks into my schedule actually keeps me at the top of my game. I think of it as trying to force yourself to run a marathon after starving for a week. You can run for a while, and you might even be able to walk and crawl for a distance…but you’ll run a lot longer and more efficiently if you feed yourself the right things.

For writers the right things (write things?) are the things that feed your brain — that feed your imagination and your soul. So for me it means reading (poetry is great for this), watching movies, listening to music, talking a walk in the woods or on the beach or in the mountains…or just visiting with friends. Learning new stuff is really useful too, so try going to a museum or an art gallery or watching a documentary. The goal is to learn something new, put something into your brain without immediately drawing on it (which is what happens with all the research we do for specific projects).

During that down period, I think it’s very important NOT to write. Or at least, not to write fiction. If you’re like me, the minute you set such a rule, you’ll be itching to write ficiton again (so that’s half the battle right there). If an idea occurs to you, then jot it down on your trusty notepad or whatever you use to keep track of your ideas, but don’t start work on it.

It might sound odd, but I think the number one thing that helps me relax and take advantage of this down time is to think of it as prep time. Even though I’m not technically prepping for anything, everything that I do is grist for the mill. So it’s not only okay, it’s a necessary part of the creative process.

Granted, when you’ve got the kind of deadlines I’ve got, you have to keep the mini-vacations to a…er…minimum, but you do need to take them. Which means really planning out your schedule ahead of time so you’re not reacting to deadline crisis after deadline crisis — which is how I began my writing career.

The other really important thing to keeping those fires burning bright is to take care of yourself. Eat right and exercise. Make sure you’re protecting your back and your wrists with the right chair and keyboard. Don’t overdue the caffeine and don’t cut all the physical activity out of your day just because you think you can’t spare half an hour with a book due at the end of the week.

You can spare half an hour. Staying well and energetic is one of the biggest favors you can do yourself.

So those are my immediate thoughts on keeping the creative fires blazing high. How about you? What do you do to keep on your game when you’ve got deadlines looming?