Mid-Career Writer Burnout

I can talk about this more easily now because, at the moment, it feels safely past. In the last couple of years, I've felt pretty worn down by writing and, at the same time scared of it. I think that's probably in large part due to the novel I've recently finished: it's fully of scary material, and I think the writing is maybe the best I've done. Maybe that's why it drained all my energy. But it felt like I didn't have much in the first place.

Now I'm enjoying a fresh burst of enthusiasm. And I've just run across an item that in retrospect cheers me. Anne Lamott, well known for her book about writing BIRD BY BIRD, has a few paragraphs here and there about her writing career in her book about faith TRAVELING MERCIES. I was reading along in the faith book, not thinking about career issues, when I came to this companionable little item:

"The truth was, though, that I'd hardly written in weeks, and then only pitiful stream-of-consciousness writing exercises, like Job's wife trying to get THE ARTIST'S WAY to work. I couldn't remember the point anymore; a lot of rewards had come my way, but I felt like a veteran greyhound at the racetrack who finally figures out that she's been chasing mechanical bunnies....It was an awful predicament, to be so tired of doing what I do and, at the same time, worried that I wasn't going to be ALLOWED to do it anymore. That the authorities were going to call and say I'd blown my chance to be one of the writers--but they'd found me a new job, at the Laundromat. I was going to be the anxious woman who hands out change: "Here, here's some quarters. Don't use that machine, it overflows! Hey! That man's using your basket!"

I was both thrilled and amused to read this and recognize my own feelings: the sense that I dreaded doing the work but that I might be on the verge of losing the chance. Since that moment of hers, Anne Lamott has continued to publish good writing. And I feel that I've done my own best work while in that dismal state. So the mood is not crippling or terminal and--Hallelujah!--it's not mine alone.