Creative burnout and story hyperfixation

[AmbreaTaddy]

Hello, it's your favorite (real) French woman !

I've been inactive on the forum because I'm battling my greatest foe : The creative burnout.

I don't know if it's because my brain is wired differently, but I have this thing were I can't stop creating. Whatever time of the day it is, no matter my state, I will always be imagining a story, daydreaming about things that could happen, etc...

So when I say 'creative burnout', I'm not talking about the kind where you have a burnout and you need to stop creating. I'm talking about the kind where you have daydreamt and imagined so much about a particular story that you don't find it interesting anymore.

I don't know if it happens to others, but I have those hyperfixations about a particular story, write thousands of words, hundreds of chapters, and then burnout. And my brain starts to fixate on something else, even though I don't want to. Like, you sit in front of your document, ready to write about X, but you don't have any idea what to write because you spent the whole day thinking about Y.

To avoid this issue, I have a tendency to write several stories at the same time, so that I can switch back and forth and avoid the burnout. My brain likes to do several things at the same time, and writing two chapters for two different stories of different genres at the same time is comforting for my creative mind.

But now, as I passed 150,000k words for both stories I'm writing at the same time, brain decided 'No, I don't like them anymore, I want to write this new shiny story I just thought about !' and thus I'm starting to hyperfixate on another story even though I'm past the midway point with my two current story and it won't be long until I'm finished.

That's a lot of oversharing, but I'm talking about my issue to ask you :

- Does it happen to you ? If yes, how do you deal with it ?

- According to you, should I follow my brain and stop writing those stories (eventually finishing them at a later date), or should I speedrun the ending, even if the quality drops, so that I can start my new story ? OR, new idea, should I slow down the updates for the two current stories, and in exchange write the new one at the same time, essentially moving from 2 current stories to 3 ?

I don't know. Brain goes brrrrr

 

[JayMark]

It sounds to me like you've already finished the book in question. You have lots of readers, so wrap it up cleanly as the finish of your book *if you are done* or the end of the first book in a series *if you have more story in you for this character or world but want to tell it later*. You don't need to answer every question and wrap everything cleanly to finish either, you just have to have a satisfying conclusion *for you and most readers* to the main conflict of that book.

 

[AmbreaTaddy]

It sounds to me like you've already finished the book in question. You have lots of readers, so wrap it up cleanly as the finish of your book *if you are done* or the end of the first book in a series *if you have more story in you for this character or world but want to tell it later*. You don't need to answer every question and wrap everything cleanly to finish either, you just have to have a satisfying conclusion *for you and most readers* to the main conflict of that book.

That's the annoying part. For IBANIF, I planned everything perfectly, I have the next 50 chapters in mind and the perfect conclusion, but since I already imagined it, then it's not interesting for my brain to think about it again and write it. So when I go do it, I block and end up thinking about my new story. So, yes, I guess I could cram 50 chapters into 10 and quickly finish it up, but I will probably hate myself for not writing this perfect story I have imagined.
Just brain doing brain things. But yeah, you're right, the best thing to do is probably to finish the story quickly and move on.

 

[JayMark]

I understand. If I feel like I know everything that is going to happen I get bored writing as well. What I do to counter this is leave the middle nebulous so I know where my journey must end but not all the crazy things that might happen on the way there. Sometimes this means going off outline, but for me it's better to screw up my outline that no reader will ever see than be bored writing something.

Also, the hardest part of writing is endings. If you can do endings well, then you know you're a good writer.

 

[AmbreaTaddy]

I don't do it on purpose ! Sometimes I try to keep things blurry, but then in the shower or while I boil water, suddenly the scenes play in my mind and suddenly the chapters are done

 

[JayMark]

Everything that plays in your mind fades and degrades. If you don't write it down, it never happened.
I'm trying to convince myself as much as you.

Because I've had great ideas that I can't get back, or when I penned them they changed substantially. Or something I thought was going to happen went in an unexpected direction during typing.

I'm struggling to finish a contest fiction right now that I planned super tightly, so I already know the overall happenings, but not the details. Yet when I start writing into the details some strange stuff happened that I never imagined.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

This sounds like how Hitchcock directed movies - he did all his work during the planning stages and on some films, actually fell asleep while the cameras were rolling (about the only known exception was Rope which he kept his own interest high because he insisted on filming the entire story in one take and pushed everyone to have it perfect).
I'm kind of in this trap for my PocketFM stuff (though there the combination of currently fighting a bad cold while also working two part time jobs, and a wife increasingly frustrated with them finding excuses to not pay anything have all played factors)

 

[AmbreaTaddy]

This sounds like how Hitchcock directed movies - he did all his work during the planning stages and on some films, actually fell asleep while the cameras were rolling (about the only known exception was Rope which he kept his own interest high because he insisted on filming the entire story in one take and pushed everyone to have it perfect).
I'm kind of in this trap for my PocketFM stuff (though there the combination of currently fighting a bad cold while also working two part time jobs, and a wife increasingly frustrated with them finding excuses to not pay anything have all played factors)

Yeah, it's a bit like Hitchcock, except after the planning phase I actually have to write the stuff, I can't let people play in front of a camera...
Right now, I'm trying to cheat myself into speedrunning the ending by skipping less interesting parts, or explaining them in a single paragraph, and instead focusing on things I want to write. Doesn't match the pace I had in mind, but it gets the stuff done and I think it keeps things interesting for the reader.

It's just that... A part that was supposed to last an entire arc was reduce to a chapter, that's all T-T

 

[Worthy39]

Yeah, I had that exact thing happen to me. I finished my first major story arc, and was completely bored when I started on the second arc, because I had it fully planned out. What I did was keep the same basic plot, but I'm completely rewriting the delivery I planned, and going for a similar style arc, with most of the same plot points, but now with a whole different set-up. I added a time skip, removed a bunch of characters, and added a new plot point I was originally considering to do much later. Even when you have the 'perfect' idea for an ending or chapter, if you're not excited about it, you probably won't write it in a way that draws people in, and nobody else will enjoy it either. Even if it's not 'perfect', whatever excites you is what other people are going to enjoy reading.

 

[AmbreaTaddy]

Yeah, I had that exact thing happen to me. I finished my first major story arc, and was completely bored when I started on the second arc, because I had it fully planned out. What I did was keep the same basic plot, but I'm completely rewriting the delivery I planned, and going for a similar style arc, with most of the same plot points, but now with a whole different set-up. I added a time skip, removed a bunch of characters, and added a new plot point I was originally considering to do much later. Even when you have the 'perfect' idea for an ending or chapter, if you're not excited about it, you probably won't write it in a way that draws people in, and nobody else will enjoy it either. Even if it's not 'perfect', whatever excites you is what other people are going to enjoy reading.

That's true ! Now I have to keep my brain from hyperfocusing on this new story and finish the current ones...

 

[Worthy39]

That's true ! Now I have to keep my brain from hyperfocusing on this new story and finish the current ones...

The more you try not to think about it, the worse it gets (speaking from experience). I just kind of let my next story idea run loose in the back of my head while the rest works on this one.

 

[Eldoria]

Still a newbie writer, but I'm very excited (at first). I released 4 different novels in just 2 months after my debut. But now, I'm only focusing on 1 main novel and want to finish (and perfect it). Well, maybe my feelings are a bit different from yours, but my novels are tied together in a large universe with various timelines and themes. So instead of finishing them all at once, I choose to focus on finishing 1 novel first because I know the main novel will intersect with other novels in the next arc.

 

[LuciferVermillion]

Burnout years ago. Made lots of notes and decided to put them aside. Would sometimes check on them and see whether I could use it in my work.

 

[RepresentingCaution]

Procreate, and then you'll have something new to hyperfixate on, and you won't be allowed to burn out even though you'll definitely burn out. Also, your offspring may try to drown you in the bathtub because it is playing with the bubble bath bottle and decided to see what would happen if it poured bath water directly into both of your nostrils while you're washing your hair. It will never give you privacy, and if it does give you privacy by some miracle, you'll be too worried about its safety or the safety of your furniture or walls or floor or ceiling or cabinets or electronics or clothes or refrigerator or oven, etc. to enjoy that privacy.

 

[LiteraryWho]

Considering that most stories (especially WN) are horribly overwrought anyway, don't think of this so much as creative burnout, as your mind doing you the favor and cutting your darlings for you. If you don't think the scene worth writing, it probably wasn't worth reading either.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

It will never give you privacy, and if it does give you privacy by some miracle, you'll be too worried about its safety or the safety of your furniture or walls or floor or ceiling or cabinets or electronics or clothes or refrigerator or oven, etc. to enjoy that privacy.

I used to work with a woman who's goal was to become an air force or navy pilot (last I heard, she had been accepted as a mechanic with a provisional option to fly, due to her being tiny - exactly the smallest size a pilot could possibly be without having to reengineer the cockpit) - when she was three or four, her parents left her alone for two hours. She decided she wanted to see how the radio worked. Took it apart. Put it back together. It looked like crap but still worked, and she had some understanding of it... Her parents never left her alone with tools not locked up tightly again until she was a teenager...

 

[DireBadger]

never had that problem, but I am a 'seat of my pants' writer. I write a very simple outline of how I want the story to go, and a few 'base points' that I have to hit by such and such a chapter, and then let go and start writing.
Sometimes things change, sometimes characters are added because they are right, and sometimes I have to throw a chapter (or ten) away, but I write 5k-word chapters, and usually I can finish before I burn out.
Later on, I do the same for the next novel in the same series. set my goals, add plot breaks, and the end outline, and then let it write itself using my hands again.

It works for me, and completing a 500-page book in a couple of weeks lets me turn towards the next story idea or take a break if I need it.

I will never understand how these web writers keep writing the same darned book for two years. Most of them get incredibly boring to read (a certain popular book where the protagonist kept resetting every few months comes to mind), and by the time the book hits 1000 pages, it's time to start the next one, either in the same series or a different series, to reset your interest level.