a little red flag

[mrissa]

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux. You can comment here or there.

I know a lot of writers. Really a lot. Really really. And we all have different process, and that’s great, that’s wonderful. In person I have been known to chirp “we are all a beautiful rainbow,” but it’s really hard to get my total lack of sarcasm on that point through on the internet. (We are, though! We are all a beautiful rainbow! Yay!) In this case, I have spotted what looks like a consistent red flag for burnout, and I’m having a hard time phrasing it so that it’s clear that I don’t mean to exclude some kinds of inspiration.

Here’s the red flag. Writers with a few novels or a ton of short stories under their belt who get into a place where they only want to talk about being sick of tropes and wanting to deconstruct them. I know that deconstruction is a major creative inspiration in some writers’ processes (all a beautiful rainbow!). But the larger percentage of conversation about other people’s work gets to be about deconstruction and frustration, the more I watch for other signs of burnout.

Because–squee is not just good publicity. Squee is important for your own work. If you’re not honestly feeling like squeeing about other work you’re encountering, that’s a bad sign. And it’s probably not a bad sign about what’s out there in the world, because there is a lot of stuff out there in the world. If none of it is pressing your buttons, really none? that’s a bad sign about your buttons and where you are in terms of energy levels, taking criticism, getting enough recharge, all those things.

This is not a red flag of you being (or a friend being!) a bad person, or a worthless artist, or someone who will never recover, or anything like that. I’ve seen many people come out of this kind of burnout. But just as it’s easier to talk about how to begin a story than how to deal with the middle and ending that grow out of it, it’s a lot easier to talk about early-career things than all the paths that can grow out of them. And yet it feels to me like there are a lot of mid-career/developing writer paths and pitfalls that it would be really useful to talk about more, so…I’m going to try to do some of that, and I appreciate the other people who are doing that too.

(One of my favorite roads out of this is to cast my net very, very wide and look at things that are way outside my usual so that badly handled tropes and obvious choices are less grating. But other solutions for jolting out of this kind of deconstruction/negativity trap welcome.)

Comments

[gaudior]

...oh.

Yes, that is indeed what is going on with me, thank you.

Suggestions for getting out of it?

(Even if not, it's really useful that you identified it!)

[mrissa]

Your museum of fine art has some Inuit prints. You could go look at those.

Or, like, some really good nonfiction that's out of your usual box. Nature writing, or biographies, or something else if you usually read those. Poems, if you're having a hard time getting long-form with the tinyone.

Kalevi Aho symphonies.

Stuff that is not pinging your usual UGH THIS AGAIN buttons.

[thanate]

Nothing to add at present, but thank you for the more-than-101 discussions.

[sartorias]

This is a very true thing.

I'm glad you mentioned looking way outside the usual. All processes are different, but I think that one is a bennie for just about everyone.

[mrissa]

And the worst case scenario is: it doesn't work and you've looked at some cool art way outside your usual.

Oh darn.

[sartorias]

Exactly--or listened to Gesualdo, or learned a few words of Old Norse, or watched a season of a kdrama.

[fadeaccompli]

I am lucky, such as it is, that I got my burnout from trying to deconstruct all the things out of the way before I started writing anything publishable. It was a very frustrating phase, and sometimes I start dropping back into it--but these days I'm getting a lot better at reminding myself that it's more important that I do something I like than that I do something to prove it can be done differently than it was done before.

(Deconstruction that I find fun is still a delight. But I am giving up on that assumption of responsibility for 'Oh, that's a trope, therefore I must deconstruct it!')

[reveritas]

I think this probably relates to readers, too. If all you want to do is deconstruct what you're reading, maybe it's time to read stuff you don't think needs it.

[abracanabra]

I can see this. I can also see that some writers try to focus really hard on deconstructing other writing as a way to improve--and the effort burns them out and sucks the joy out of it. Hmm.

[mrissa]

Oh yes. Or even if it's not deliberately as a way to improve, I think it sometimes comes as part of the process for trying to improve--I have learned to see what is cliched about my own writing and now my cliche detector is set way too high, that sort of thing.