If you follow me on social media you’ll have seen that at the beginning of November I finished writing The Wayward Damned and it is now with my wonderful editor. What you might not be aware of is the sheer amount of work I put in within the final few weeks in order to meet my deadline, and how I managed to burn out so bad I made myself ill.
I had it all planned out. I started writing The Wayward Damned back in December 2022 with the intention of having finished the first draft by the end of August. I worked consistently for most of that time, but around June this progress became a bit less clear and promising, things got pushed back and due to mental health issues and moving house I reached the point where for a few months I just wasn’t getting the writing done. This obviously made the challenge of sticking to deadlines harder. After a while I had to push the deadline back to the end of September, and then again to the end of October. From the middle of October I reached a frantic point where I had to throw myself so solidly into my work in order to get it done that I had to ignore pretty much everything else in life. For the final week of finishing this book I barely left my office, working from first thing in the morning to well past midnight on a daily basis. I was barely sleeping, staring at screens for hours on end, forcing myself to write upwards of 6,000 words a day every day.
Despite the burn out and exhaustion I could feel creeping in, despite the way it all became so forced and no longer enjoyable… I kept pushing because I had a deadline to keep. I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. I was neglecting my health quite severely but I just kept saying ‘I’ve only got to get to this point’, ‘in just a few days I can rest’. By the time I emailed my manuscript to my editor I was already sick and promptly went to bed, shattered. I woke up the next morning and realised I had the flu. I spent almost an entire week in bed sleeping most hours of the day and night and even now a week later, I’m still recovering.
So why am I telling you this? It’s simple. I want to stress the importance of not being like me. Do as I say, rather than as I do in other words. As writers we have to draw from our creative wells – it can be hard, exhausting work and if we don’t take care of ourselves and take time to replenish that well then we’re going to really struggle. Not just with our writing, but with life in general. It’s vital to maintain a routine that protects you from overworking – I will certainly be keeping quite strict rules around writing now to ensure that I’m not risking my health again. I will be making sure that I don’t spend all day sat at my desk instead taking regular breaks to get up and stretch. I’ll be using 4thewords to get my daily writing goals done relatively quickly so that I’m spending less time looking at screens and being more productive whilst also giving myself time to rest. I’m also going to prioritise down time and plenty of reading time in order to replenish my well frequently.
S. M. MITCHELL 
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