207: Feel Bored By Your Book? Here's What To Do

 

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Feel Bored By Your Book? Here's What To Do

 

Hello, welcome back to Your Big Creative Life podcast. This episode will be coming out in November, which is insane. I'm recording this at the end of October and just in shock about how fast time is flying. I, yeah, I'm trying to get a few, November's going to be a busy month for me, so I'm trying to get ahead and batch record some podcast episodes so that I can just feel like have a little bit more space in November. Yeah, it just feels like November always goes fast as well. So Okay, but I want to touch on something in this episode that I've been experiencing recently. And that is like, okay, what we're going to talk about is what to do when you're bored of your book, which might sound funny, like if you're not a writer. I don't know. I feel like people have this perception who aren't writers that you just like absolutely love your story and you want to like spend all of your time with it and it's your baby and everything's lovely. But honestly, sometimes you do just get sick of it a bit. I'm not quite at the point of feeling bored with my story necessarily, but I am the book that I'm editing. But I am at the point where I'm just like kind of over it, honestly.

Like I've just spent, I get to this point with my writing, with my books after I've done a lot of editing on it. doesn't happen for me in the drafting process or the initial part of editing the book. It happens after I've been editing for a while and I'm still editing and I'm just like, oh, I just want to be done. And I get this sense of frustration and impatience, and I'm like, I'm just sick of it. I'm just over it. And I start thinking about a new project. I start writing something new, and I'm like, no, I want to focus my efforts here, but I can't totally because I have to finish edits to my book. This is where that hits for me. You might experience it differently. It might come at a different point for you, or you might never experience this, and that's fine. Maybe it is just a bit of dissatisfaction with your book or your writing process or your characters or something. Like maybe it's not you full on hating your book or being super bored of your book. Maybe it is just that bit of like, I'm not really enthused about working on this right now. So wherever you fall on that spectrum, hopefully the tips in this episode will help you kind of get back into the swing of things because we can't, here's the thing about writing. We can't let our feelings, our mood, our emotions dictate every step of the process and when we work on the book. I mean, yes, it's important to take those into consideration, but sometimes you just kind of have to like woman up and sit down and work on your book when you don't really want to, especially if you're on a deadline for something or you want to get your book published or you want to do whatever's next. Sometimes you just have to like push yourself, muddle through it, even if you're feeling bored or frustrated or impatient or whatever.

So, like me, in my case, I'm finishing up, actually not finishing up. I finished it yesterday. I have to e-mail it to my agent, the latest draft of my manuscript. And I'm going to do that after I record this podcast episode, actually, because I have a couple of bullet points I need to address and write in the e-mail to her when I send her the draft. But I'm going to do that. So I did finish my edits, but I have been, just at this point of not really wanting to work on my edits, but needing to do it. And so, I just kind of had to set my feelings to the side and just be like, you have to work on it. Even if you're bored of it, Katie, even if you're frustrated, even if you're impatient for this book to be out on submission, you have to do it. So. Okay, I have a few tips for you of what to do if you find yourself in this situation. Number one. Well, first of all, just normalize it. I mean, like accept your feelings, normalize it. It's part of the process. If you're writing your first book and you feel this, you might not know that this is normal, but it's okay. It's valid. Let yourself feel that way. That's like a first step. Okay, but tip #1 I have of what to do. If the boredom, frustration, like, just being over your book, if that is something deep-seated and deeper and you think it's actually burnout, like that maybe you were burned out by writing overall, that is the time to step back and take a break.

If you're just doing some mild procrastination, you're kind of dragging your feet, you feel a little bit bored of the direction of the story, that's not usually a sign that you need to take a break. But if it feels chronic, if it feels like it goes deeper than this, if you're dealing with a lot of other things outside of writing that just make it feel impossible to work on your book, that is a sign that you might be experiencing burnout and taking a break, letting yourself rest and just not think about your book at all, that might be the best thing for you. So I wanted to mention that first because how you tackle this issue is going to depend on if it's burnout and something deeper or not. Because I can give you tips, but if you are truly experiencing burnout, then it's not going to be enough to just like, oh, push through it and, you know, try these other little hacks. You've got to address what's going on at a deeper level. than just trying some little hacks or whatever. So that's tip #1 to remember. Tip #2 is to start something new. Now I want to explain this because it sounds obvious, but here's the thing about starting something new. I am a writer who has experienced shiny object syndrome, which is the syndrome that happens when you are working on a book and you experience difficulty. You hit your first obstacle. You don't, you've got writer's block. You're not, you don't love the direction that things are going in. You just, you're not really feeling it.

And then you get an idea for a new book. And it's called Shiny Object Syndrome because the new book idea is shiny. You haven't started writing it yet, so there are no issues. There are no, you're not procrastinating. You literally haven't started writing it yet. So of course it's shiny and magical and new and wonderful. So then you jump ship, you abandon your current project, and you go to this new thing. And then you get 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, whatever amount of words in, and you hit a stumbling block again. Same thing happens. You hit an obstacle, you get writer's block, you don't know how to resolve something. So then you get another idea, and then you jump ship to focus on that one. And this is something that could be chronic. This can be why there are authors who have never finished a book, and they have multiple projects just kind of languishing on their laptop, because they just never finish something. And it's very important to have the skill of finishing a book. Now, it doesn't mean that you can't abandon a project. If it's been three months and it feels like pulling teeth and you just don't think the story idea is working, then you can just set it aside and move on. That's fine. And to be clear, there are some authors who can work on multiple projects at once.

So they can be working on two different book ideas and that's fine and it works for them. But this shiny object syndrome is what we want to avoid. So in this situation, when you're feeling bored, frustrated, whatever, with your book, starting something new is like, think of it as a refresh. It's an opportunity to just take a break from your story. So you're not jumping ship, you're not abandoning your book. It's not like every time you get bored of it, you have to start a new book idea. It really is just take a short break and start a new project or give yourself permission to work on another project that you might have already started. So for me, I didn't do this over the last couple of weeks, but I could have when I was feeling a bit bored of my book and like, oh, I'm just so over it. I have started outlining and I've written like 500 words of a new book. So I could have given myself permission to just unplug from this book, unplug from these edits that I've been procrastinating on and give myself like a week to just work on the new book. And then that would feel energizing and fun to get to play in that new story world. And then maybe once I feel that way, I can come back and feel ready to tackle the rest of the edits and just get this done.

So really think of it like a break of starting something new. You're not abandoning your project because you can't abandon a book every time it gets hard. I mean, I don't mean to tell you what to do. You could, in theory. But if you ever want to finish a book and be published, you can't always do that. So, okay, tip #3 is to read your draft. Remind yourself of why you're writing it and fall back in love with your story, characters, world, all of that good stuff. Okay, this can be super helpful for me if I have not gone back to read my draft in a hot minute. If it has been a while, which actually I did a bit of that finishing my edits because I was like 95% done, but I had a suspicion that there were a couple of other things I might need to tweak or add. So I just did a quick read through of the entire draft. And it did make me feel excited, like a little bit excited about the book. It did make me feel like, oh yeah, this is a good story. I'm just feeling frustrated with having to do these edits, but the story's good. So that helps me feel a little bit more like refreshed when it came to like the book and how I was feeling about it.

So if it's been a while for you, maybe that can just remind, you can remind yourself of why you're writing this book in the 1st place and what connects you to it. You are writing this book for a reason. It's set in this world for a reason. You have these characters for a reason. So if you can remind yourself of that, can be helpful for just shifting your mindset around how you view your book. Now... One caution with this, y'all know that I recommend when you're writing the first draft to just get the first draft out before you go back to edit. So when you are going to read through the book, do it quickly. This is not an editing pass. You're not making notes of all the things you need to fix, especially if you're still in the first draft. This is not the time to do that. This is purely for motivation and inspiration and shifting how you view your book. It's not an editing read through. Okay, next tip, Talk to other writers slash read your favorite books to access your love of writing. This is, I've done this in the past when I'm feeling super stuck and just like kind of frustrated with the process and feeling a little bit like, the project's just a bit stale. The book's a bit stale.

I will take a writing class. I had a writing group when I was living in Nashville and working on a book that was so helpful to just get outside myself and read someone else's writing, to talk about it with other writers. I mean, talking about the creative process and feeling blocked and what we're wrestling with our plot, all of that is so beneficial to talk through with someone else. And it can be a writer because... It's helpful to have it be a writer because they understand on a deep level what you're going through. But if you don't have any writers in your life that you can talk to, if you don't know anyone, that's fine. Maybe you can just be someone like a friend or your partner or someone where you can just kind of like talk about your process, talk about what you're experiencing, get it out of your head and verbalize it. That can help some release some of the heaviness or the feeling about it. And I put read your favorite books as well, because this is something that always works for me. If I'm just kind of feeling stuck on writing or I'm procrastinating a lot, or I'm like, oh, why am I doing this? I guess it's more of a tip for that situation, although it could help if you're just bored of your story as well.

Reading in my genre, I don't do a ton of that when I'm drafting. Actually, I generally read outside of my genre, but giving yourself permission to read something that you love, reading fan fiction, reading books you loved as a kid, just anything to tap into that feeling of why you're doing this in the 1st place. The fact that you love reading, you love books, you love storytelling, otherwise you wouldn't be doing this. So like accessing that can be beneficial. My next tip is to try writing a new scene that will never make it into the book. This is also, I guess I'm realizing this now, a lot of these tips are also helpful for writer's block. Even if you feel like you love your story, but you just have writer's block, these tips could still help. But they can help spice things up if you're just straight up bored of your book. So this could mean, like I have At this point, I'm done with edits, but if I were feeling this sense of frustration and, I'm over it and boredom with my book, I could take my characters and write a scene six months before the book opens. It's never going to make it into the book. It's not important. But I can just write a moment that maybe was referenced in the book or that I think had a profound impact on the characters. just write them in a different setting or different situation. I mean, this is beneficial to help you understand your characters for sure, but it's just a way to shift, to spice things up, to make it feel fresh, is to put them in a situation they wouldn't normally be in or just write something that takes place before or after the book ends. That can be helpful too.

Okay, and then my last tip, this is where I'm going to hold your hand when I say this. But ******* buckle down and do it anyway. This is like the tough love tip, okay? I had to get so real with myself when I was like whining and dragging my feet about these edits. I just had to get real with myself and give myself some tough love and be like, you don't need to be putting this much of A fuss up about your edits. Like just ******* do it. And I did. And it didn't take me that long. And then I felt fine afterwards and relieved. And it wasn't bad. And I actually kind of enjoyed it once I got in because I could see that all those changes I was making were making the story better. So you just got to do it anyway. It goes back to what I said at the beginning. Sometimes if you're on a deadline, you want to publish your book, you want to get on to the next book. If you're feeling so bored of your book and it's done, it's written and you're in edits, That can be motivation, like dangling this carrot of, writing a new book once this is done. Like you just gotta, yeah, you just gotta buckle down and do it anyway. It's sort of, well, not sort of, it is like going to the gym. Like sometimes you just gotta go work out when you're not necessarily feeling it. And you can set a limit for yourself. You can say, I'm just gonna do 10 minutes, or I'm just gonna put on my workout clothes and walk for 5 minutes. And if I truly am not feeling it, I can leave. But at least open, and the writing equivalent of this would be like, At least open up your computer. At least open up your manuscript so that you can look at the document. Even if you don't do nothing else, you just set a timer for 5 minutes and read over part of it. Okay, fine. Better than nothing, you know. But yeah, you just got to do it.

This is why I hate the advice of like, oh, only you got to wait for the muse to hit to inspire you and only write when you're feeling like in flow and everything's magical because that's just not the reality of publishing. Writing, sure, if you are fine with it taking years to write a book and you don't really plan to publish, you're just writing for creative fulfillment. Okay, fine, perfect. That's wonderful. A lot of writers do that. But if you do have a time constraint, you got to write and think of it as like another job almost. I've heard authors who have day jobs talk about this. Like they will clock in to their job, I'm putting that in quotes because it's not their full-time job, but their gig, I guess, as a writer. And for some people, that's an hour before they start work three times a week. You know, you get to set the schedule. It's up to you how often you do this. But thinking of it as it's not optional. You have to do this. Because for me, I will just say that what's exhausting about all of this procrastinating and like, oh, I'm just over it. I don't want to, I'm so sick of this. I just want to be out on submission with my book, blah, blah, blah. It's all the mental chatter. It's the hamster wheel of like, I don't want to do this, but I should do it, but I don't want to do it. I want to do this thing instead, but oh my gosh, you've got to do it. And I beat myself up. And then I'm thinking about it all day, but I don't actually open my manuscript. That is exhausting.

So if I can just cut that off and make a deal with myself, all right, Katie, 10 minutes, and then I do 10 minutes and 99% of the time it's fine. And I'm like, oh, I can keep going because I'm actually kind of having fun and I'm enjoying this. But it's just, I will say, if you're listening to this and you're like, wow, Katie, that sounds like a lot of resistance. Like, do you even enjoy writing? Just in case you're in case you're listening to this and thinking that, I just want to say I really am at an extra, I'm being extra with my procrastination and my like feeling just over my book because this is my now third book that I will be sending out on submission soon. And I'm really it's weighing on me. Like I'm feeling a lot of emotions about this. And so I know that all of that is impacting my experience editing the book. It is not normally this hard for me. I don't normally experience this. It is purely because the The stakes feel high for this and I feel stressed and I feel like, here we go again. I'm getting ready to send another book out. What's gonna happen? What if this also doesn't sell? So there's just so much going on in my brain and my body related to this that makes it feel harder. That's why I have this extra level of resistance to it. I promise I do like writing and I do like editing. It's just, there's a lot of other stuff going on. And honestly, emotional stuff going on in my life.

I've talked about this a bit on social media that I started therapy again a couple of weeks ago to look at some stuff that's come out about my family. My parents have separated. It's just, there's a lot. Like I'm dealing with a lot from, with my family and looking at some things that happened in my past and kind of trying to make sense of things and looking at the impact that this stuff has had on me. And it's heavy. It's a lot of heavy work. And it's making me feel like I just don't have as much capacity for my book as I usually do. I've had to kind of prioritize like work, Work, it always takes priority over my book because I don't have to work on my, there's no deadline to when I need to get these changes to my agent. I need to focus on client work. That's like the priority always. And then also my daughter, you know, like she's a priority. My husband, like my family is also a priority. So those two things will often push my book back. And I've just had to learn in this last month or so to just be really gentle with myself while I'm doing all of this therapy and this deep work because it's a lot emotionally, like my brain, my body, it's hard. So it makes sense that I just don't have as much capacity for my book and I'm feeling like, I'm just over this because it's hard and I'm doing hard things in other areas of my life. So anyways, that was a bit of a tangent, but I just wanted to explain that in case you're listening to this. I'm like, what does Katie even like writing? I promise I do.

There's just a lot of other stuff that's going on to make it harder. look, I have gotten over that feeling of being bored with my book. I have gotten over that feeling of like, I'm just over this book already. I want to be moving on. I feel really good about it. Doing that little read through helped me kind of, I don't know, see it in a new light and appreciate it more. So, yeah. And one other, I wrote down a little note, but then I didn't end up reading this, but I actually want to go back and read this because I do think it's important to look at. So when I'm talking about feeling bored of your book, I don't mean like the experience of reading it makes you feel bored. Because if you're reading your book and you're like, oh, the actual plot is boring, That's something different. Then maybe there is something that you need to fix in the actual book with the plot, the characters, the pacing. Maybe it's just something isn't working because if you're bored reading it, then readers are going to be bored reading it. So I'm talking more about like if you just feel bored of your book because you've been working on it so much and you feel frustrated and you feel like you're over it. So it's more of a mindset thing, not the book actually being boring to read. So just want to mention that too.

All right, I am happy that you're here, and I'm gonna just send this draft off to my agent, and fingers crossed, this will be it. She'll do a little polish on it, which might take a little bit to go through sentence by sentence, just to make sure that everything is consistent, there aren't any big like errors that we need to fix, cleaning up any like grammar stuff that needs to be cleaned up, and then after that, It will be on submission. So we're not there yet, but we're closer. We're one step closer now that I finally got my edits done. So I'll keep you all posted. Thank you for listening.

 

 

Katie Wolf