Midyear 2022 Update

It’s been about a year since my last update, so I’ll cover everything.

I’ve done multiple drafts on my big writing project. I am now on approximately draft 14/15. I sent it to the editor back in December, and got it back about three months ago in May. I’ve done one draft since getting it back from the editor, but it needs at least two more drafts before I send it to an agent/another editor. I’ve burned out on editing it.

Between December and today, I was able to write on other stuff.

• I have a story based on the battle of Verdun, which is presently at 75,000 words long. It is the sequel to the book I’m presently editing. This is only about 1/3 done. I’ve burned out on working on that one, at least for now.
• I have a story based on a bank heist, which is about 30,000 words long. I lost my passion for this one.
• I have a Science Fantasy Post-Apocalyptic story which is about 100,000 words long. It was a very fun story, but just didn’t work fundamentally. I think I’ll go back to it at some point, but I don’t know when.
• I started a short story LitRPG story last week, but it’s only 5500 words long. I want to finish this before continuing anything else, but I’m burned out.

Additionally, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. According to goodreads, I’ve read 68 books so far this year. A fair number of them were only novella-sized nonfiction books, but still, 68 is 68. I’ve been putting out reviews for them recently, combining reviews for nonfiction with fiction. Right now, I have a backlog of 1.5 months worth of reviews sitting in the hopper, waiting to be published.

Right now, I’m feeling burned out. The older I get, the more I see patterns in my own behavior. It seems like I get burned out at least once a year. If you go back in time, searching my blog for the words ‘burned out,’ you’ll see that I regularly bring up the fact that I get burned out by writing and reading/reviewing too many stories. Between all the writing/editing/reading/reviewing I’ve been doing, I’ve reached my limit.

So where does that leave us? I’m going to take a few weeks off. I have six review blogposts written, so you have that to look forward to. Based off previous experience on my part, it usually takes a few weeks to a few months for me to recover from burning out. I might recover before all six of those posts are posted, or I might not. I’m not going to read/review/write/edit anything for a few weeks until I’m feeling better, so if there’s a gap in my posting, that’s why.