Sharpen Your Axe - How to Not Burnout
Today I’ll be discussing a topic that is timely to my own writing; How to maintain productivity—or perhaps rephrased in a way we can better relate—how to not burn out.
But before we get into the "how not to", let's set the stage for what led me to finally seek the antidote to a sickness that often plagues our hustle culture as a whole.
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After self-publishing for six years, moving into traditional publishing, pumping out three books in three years while being pregnant, becoming a new mother then parenting a toddler all while working another full-time job, the Burnout monster was something that had nearly fatally wounded me by the time Symphony for a Deadly Throne was released into the world this past February 2023. Despite how well my writing career was going, my mental health was at an all-time low as well as my physical health. I was on the verge of tears almost daily, acquired carpal tunnel, suffered chronic headaches and my back was one giant pain spasm from any mere twist. Basically, my body felt like it was made up of dust stuffed in a burlap bag. Any subsequent sharp graze threatened to rip my entirety right open. Needless to say, the pace at which I was pushing myself to be productive no longer was sustainable with my new life.
I desperately needed to reassess. Rewire. Reform who and what I always believed myself to be; a person who could do it all, all the time.
A rather intimidating, and inconvenient, moment to figure this out given I was now on deadline for a new duology. Something, of course, I am aware is a “good” problem to have. Book deals are something I will never, ever take for granted. But this mindset is perhaps one reason I found myself painted into this broken corner. My gratitude warped my behavior into forgetting my own personal needs and boundaries (which we'll touch on more specifically in a bit).
Next, is the "how not to" subject of this newsletter and sharing a very emotional conversation with my husband in our kitchen, where I unloaded almost a decade's worth of pent-up Burnout. After which, he very lovingly held me while my tears dried up, ensuring I had settled back on solid ground before he told me the story of the Two Lumberjacks. Which I shall now paraphrase for you (even if you already know it).
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There once were two lumberjacks who held a competition for who could chop the most wood in a day. They situated themselves on distant parts of the forest, so they could not see each other's progress but still could catch glimpses of what the other was doing.
The one lumberjack set off unceasingly swinging his axe at the wood. From time to time he would see the other lumberjack sitting by his tent, axe in his lap. He was sure he would win the competition, for he continued to tirelessly chop wood from sunrise to sunset and note each time the other lumberjack took breaks. At the end of the day, both men visited their two camps to see who was the victor. Much to the one lumberjack's surprise, the other man had a pile of wood that was a mountainous rival to his own.
"How could you have won?" he proclaimed. "You took all those breaks!"
"Those were not breaks," said the other lumberjack. "I was stopping to sharpen my axe."
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Perhaps it was the fragile, impressional state I was in when my husband regaled me with this story, but it basically blew my mind. It is such a simple lesson and a pretty obvious solution and yet, it took me nearly grounding myself in to dust to understand its wisdom.
I was the first lumberjack.
While, yes, I was still chopping wood, still producing a product, I kept using the same axe blade, over and over and over until it was as dull as a butter knife. The effort it now took for me to be productive was one hundred times harder and most assuredly less enjoyable.
Something had to change, and fast.
I had to force myself to stop every once in a while to sharpen my axe. And I use the word “force” purposefully, for my nature is to never stop. Unless you bring me to a beach or remote woods, I have a constant buzz in my veins to make, create, do. As I stated above—I believed myself to be a person who could do it all, all the time.
And, you know, I truly once was. But I also could eat a bag full of bagels and cream cheese and now find myself lactose intolerant and gluten-free. All this is to say, we change! Our bodies, our minds, our favorite color, our responsibilities, and most assuredly our lives. I had somehow lost sight of this. When it came to writing, I was still operating like my 20-something-year-old self who was single, lived alone in a studio apartment, and could find oodles of hours a day to consistently write.
Well, that amount of free time is now gone. So expecting myself to write every day and produce the same output is, and was, totally unrealistic. This was how I got attacked by the Burnout.
Great. I figured this part out. But what did I do next?
I made a list about what I inheritally knew about myself as a writer. Below is a snippet of what was on that list.
What I know about myself as a writer:
My writing takes time. I don’t like saying I’m a “slow writer” as I feel like that has a negative connotation. I need a year at the very least to complete a first draft of a fantasy novel.
The worlds + themes I’m interested in need breathing room to germinate to be effective in plotting.
It takes me an hour to fully fall into what I’m drafting and make progress with a writing session.
You can probably see the common deficit here—Time. Each bullet point requires time. And not thirty minutes here or there peppered in through out a day or between meetings or putting my toddler down for a nap. I need solid chunks of uninterrupted time.
So what did I do after this?
I made a new realistic schedule for my writing, but that also inserted axe sharpening. Instead of having daily writing goals, which, as we discussed, my life could no longer sustain in any productive, healthy, or enjoyable way— I was truly spreading myself much too thin— I found that if I scheduled a few consecutive fullwriting days (PTO days or designated weekends) with chunks of rest days in between (i.e. family time, reading, exercising, sleeping in!), words actually started to pour out of me when I eventually sat down to write. Things started to happen more organically as they once had in my twenty-something years; Ideas started to form better, twists in my plot, interesting character traits. My productivity was more productive. Or to continue with our metaphor, my axe was sharpened to allow me more output. This all might seem a little “duh” to some, but to most people who are in the thick of it, finding themselves too busy to pick their heads up and wonder, “is this the best use of my time?”, it was ground breaking.
Okay, now before this newsletter gets to be a novel in length (I clearly don't write short stories for a reason), I also wanted to touch on boundaries, which I mentioned at the very beginning.
Boundaries are a very important tool to sharpen your axe, especially when it comes to your job. This is something I’m very good at implementing in certain parts of my life, but for some reason when it comes to writing, I falter. I could probably go into a long deep-dive around imposter syndrome and being forgotten or left behind in a high-paced, ever-changing, and demanding publishing landscape, but the short and quick of it is, writing stories is my entire soul. And by some crazy chance, I get to do this for a job. There’s a large part of me that believes (and fears) that if I disrupt any part of the book production process I’ll be kicked out of Neverland. My magic portal to Narnia will be forever shut and I’ll be standing on the other side of a regular old closet door with a world of adventures in my head and no one to share them with. So where do boundaries come into play as a writer? I identified three areas for myself:
Social Media
Favors to Peers
Deadlines
Let’s start with Social Media (and I’ll seriously try to keep this brief). I, like so many others lately, needed to reduce my time on it. While it can be an incredibly connective place, it no longer serves me as it once did. I also no longer had, yes you guessed it, the time I once had to dedicate to posting. I would much rather invest in writing a good book for my readers, or being with my son and family than trying to figure out how to edit together a great reel. There’s nothing wrong with anyone who wants to do this. It’s merely just not part of what benefits me right now. So, I created a boundary there.
Favors to Peers. While I wish with my whole entire heart that I could read and blurb every book request or be a part of every interview and signing, I physically and mentally just can’t. I used to say yes to everything. Now, I am a lot more selective with what aligns with my personal time. The bonus to this is that the things I do say yes to now have a lot more of my dedication and concentration.
Deadlines. This is a big one and something I actually worked on in therapy. I need to advocate better for myself up front regarding my needs as a writer to produce good work. As a debut author (and really any author in general under contract) there is a lot of self-inflicted pressure to be the “perfect” author for a publisher. “I’ll do whatever you need whenever you need it!” Asking for more time or voicing that perhaps that proposed schedule isn't feasible with my current life felt blasphemous. I honestly didn’t want anyone to think (mainly my agent and publisher) that I wasn’t up to snuff. After all, there are millions of other writers out there. Why choose me? But here’s the thing, they did. I do have something worth waiting for that I can create (and so do you). If I’m given the proper time to cook that turkey it’ll be a whole lot tastier than a half thawed bird.
So, I held my breath, tried not to vomit, and asked for more time to finish my first draft. As the saying goes, the worst they can say is no. Thankfully, I work with amazing humans who get life and we all adjusted. I.e they said, yes. I nearly fainted with relief.
Of course, this sets off a chain of reaction in the actual production and release date of a book. If deadlines get pushed, so do releases. And there does come a time where one needs to buckle down and meet that hand-off date not matter what (which I’ve done many, many times in the past). But I found myself in a position where flexibility was on the table. Old Jacqueline would have longingly gazed at that offer and remained silent to later be shattered by the Burnout monster, my health and personal life crumbling to dust. The new Jacqueline seized it.
All of this is to say, if any of part of this tome of a newsletter has you relating, I implore you, take a moment to stop and reassess. Is the pace and at which you are creating still working? If the answer is no, make that list of what you now need and work to get it. You’ll soon find you can finally take that vacation! Go on that trip! Exercise. Watch that show and take that bubble bath guilt free. It’s all axe sharpening, my friend. Just be sure you still show up to cut the wood.