What should you do when you hit writing burnout?Utsudo has also gone through blank spells where she couldn’t write anything at all and questioned her whole life. Her approach is to rest for a few days, let inspiration come back, and refill her “mental ink.” She believes the one unchanging way to achieve something in this field is to keep improving and never stop writing.

Translated from Utsudo’s original Chinese column.

From forgetting to eat and sleep to cooling passion

　　Doing what you love most never feels tiring, and you can stay so absorbed you forget to eat and sleep?

　　When I first started seriously writing novels a few years back, that was definitely true. I’d often type away with my head down, look up, and find it had already gotten dark. There was so, so much I wanted to write, and no amount of time was enough. 

　　But after several years of writing at full blast, I gradually slowed down — like the rapid cooling after the honeymoon phase (?

　　Or when I got stuck, I’d sometimes wonder whether my talent had run dry, or blame myself for being too lazy to keep going. But I worked through those one by one, and in the blink of an eye I’ve been writing for over a decade. With so many works I can’t be bothered to count anymore — sometimes I even forget whether I’ve submitted a manuscript XD

　　I’ve always had plenty of inspiration — give me a few keywords and a story naturally forms in my head — so I’ve never worried about having nothing to write (the question is whether I have the drive to finish it). By the way, my abandonment rate is extremely low (manuscripts I started and set aside after barely writing — only about three to date). At minimum I finish the first volume, and if a submission doesn’t pass, I set it aside and write something new, to keep up my success rate for print publication.

　　After all, I still need to eat. As a student I had no such pressure — I’d write a whole manuscript in one go, then look for a buyer, and post it online if it didn’t get picked up. Now I post online first to build some presence, then submit at the same time QQ

Writing burnout: the blank spell when inspiration ran away from home

　　But even I, for whom writing novels is like breathing, part of my very life, once went through a time when I didn’t even have the drive to think up a new story. 

　　I’ve kind of forgotten what happened back then. It felt like the god of inspiration, who’d been by my side for so long, had run away from home without warning. I was completely blank during that time, as if I’d even forgotten how to write a story.

　　I’d open Word, stare blankly for a few seconds, then quietly wander off to browse the web or play games, come back after a while, and repeat in an endless loop without a shred of progress (covers face

　　I even started questioning my life, wondering why I’d chosen such a hard path. Before, I could hold my ground through my own effort, but during that time even my talent seemed to vanish, and I felt like I’d instantly become useless.

　　That’s when it suddenly hit me:apart from writing novels, I really can’t do anything at all QQ

Rest and refill your mental ink

　　Luckily that state was only temporary. After resting for a few days, the runaway god of inspiration finally agreed to come home. Things returned to normal, my abilities seemed to slowly come back, and parts that had felt clunky before suddenly flowed much more smoothly.

　　Though in the years of writing since, I’ve occasionally hit that powerless state again. To borrow a friend’s words,maybe you can’t write because you’re low on the mental ink writing runs on, so refilling it is important too XD

　　The one unchanging way to achieve something in this field is to keep improving yourself and never stop writing. It doesn’t guarantee success, but at least you won’t let yourself down — or the people who believe in you.

FAQ

Further reading (in Chinese)

• Previous: #21 (in Chinese)
• Next: #23 (in Chinese)
• Start from the beginning: #01 — Utsudo’s debut
• Column introduction
• Utsudo’s books

About the author

Utsudo is a Taiwanese light novelist and novelist VTuber with more than ten years in the industry and 40 commercially published print books. Her novel 《遺失的情書》 received a 2022 Ministry of Culture youth creative award. The 《嘿！聽說妳在鬼島當作家》 series records her experiences as a novelist in Taiwan.

📚 More on this topic: Writing Mindset & a Writer’s Life: Ghost Island Column Guide