Is this what Burnout Feels like?

Those of you who follow me on Bluesky probably noticed a sudden drop off of posts shortly after (or maybe even a little before) the publication of My Primitive Alien Exile.

There were a couple of reasons for this. I fell into an obsession with webtoon style comics and happily spent most of my day absorbed in transmigration fantasies filled with drama and romance.

But mostly, I hit this snag, where every time I switched to Scrivener to work, I hit this blank. It was like my brain would run face first into a brick wall and then just stand there, stunned.

Reading stories was easy. Writing stories became impossible. So read I did. And when I got bored with that, I found a new obsession for Chinese costume dramas.

Honestly, I’m a bit stumped. I’ve been writing consistently for something like 22 years. I’ve had down years (there was a span of five years working on the book I was determined to land a traditional publishing contract with that nearly killed my love of writing completely) but I’ve never hit a roadblock quite like this. It’s frustrating, which feeds into this loop of I don’t want to do this. Except I do want to do this. I love this. I’m not going to give it up.

I’m chalking this one up to a combination of perpetual mild depression and burnout.

That’s not to say I haven’t gotten anything done since burnout first hit in October. I’ve started drafting the second novel in the vampire trilogy (hated every word of it, too, so not sure how useful that was 😅) and I’ve been slowly chipping away at rewrites on Dreams in Blood.

Slowly. Sooooooo slowly. But slow progress is still progress.

All that to say my original plan of releasing the vampire trilogy in it’s entirety this year is sadly not going to happen. I will definitely get the first book published. I’m also aiming to get the second book in the Hired by Aliens series done and published this year. Beyond that…

Well. I’m planning to just keep trucking along, making progress on things, no matter how small.