It is not surprising those who write a book can feel: overwhelmed, stressed or tired. That is not how the experience has to be.
Still… There are many reasons to be:
- You’ve got a book to plan
- to write
- niche to find
- to create interest
- avoid plot holes
- keeping in mind your target audience
- proofreading
- book cover to make
- attention-grabbing blurb
- promotion on social media- pins to pin.
THEN, you have to place a price on your story, where will I sell it? Giveaways and contracts.
Your head is spinning. Emotions are swirling. There are so many decisions, the to-do list grows- your lists have lists.
You want to stop.
You’ve been there, I’ve been there, the biggest authors have been there.
Did you know that Stephen King nearly did not complete Carrie? That it was his wife who saw potential from his thrown away piece and encouraged him to continue. His first published book. The start of his horror stories blended with fantasy and science fiction- nearly, didn’t exist for the world to read.
What can be done to lessen these feelings?
Introduce yourself to a book writing coach like Lisa Tener. She can help you one-to-one, at every step of the way in your process of writing and publishing a book. It’s an amazing feeling to have support, especially when doing something unfamiliar. See if she is worth your time.
Let’s see what else we can do.
Table of Contents
6 Tips To Overcome Being Overwhelmed When Writing
1 Limit – Remove Distractions And Interruptions
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Studies show that our phones ruin concentration. Why be counterproductive and have something that taints your creative concentration?
The point of crafting a story is to give it your attention and concentration.
So, the notifications from email and social network which have been shown to be around 60% of the disruptions we get, isn’t so great for our productivity. Let alone the feeling of too much happening at once.
Let’s not forget non-online distractions like friends, family, pets and more.
Imagine you’re trying to write, your cat wants attention, those in your house want attention, you have so many things to do and your phone keeps beeping with notifications.
You can start to become overwhelmed and stress because you feel unable to write what you wanted.
That’s a lot on your plate. You need to find a time/place that you can concentrate only on writing.
Need more evidence?
What are distractions doing to my concentration on a scientific level?
Distractions and disruptions affect cognitive abilities. When your attention is divided up, you become unable to properly concentrate on one task. This means you are far more likely to make mistakes, have issues thinking and focusing your energy on the activity you are trying to do.
Avoid the stress and the upcoming overwhelming feeling by:
- Having a closed-door policy. Nora Roberts has said that she permits distractions only in the case of “blood or fire.”
- Keep your phone out of eye/earshot.
- A tidy desk that doesn’t make you want to concentrate on something else.
- Wear earphones.
- Set timers to only give your attention to this task for a certain amount of your day.
- Put your phone on do not disturb.
- Write down things that are troubling you. This means you’re not taking these thoughts into your time for writing and splitting your concentration.
- Motivate yourself by joining a course like Skillshare where you follow an expert who gives you tools to be the best writer you can
2 Break Tasks Into Manageable Parts- Tidbits
If you tell yourself: I need to plot the story. A dark cloud will hover over your head. That’s such a large task. Where do I start? What do I need? What can be done so I Don’t Lose The Plot?
Splitting into sections:
Let’s take a step back. What is a plot made up of? Once you have your sections, you will more easily be able to fill in each question upon your idea.
Psst… Remember plots can change over time once you start writing. So, stressing about whether or not this will work out before you have written isn’t helping anyone. Once you have written 1,000s of words (depending on if you have a short story, novel, novella etc), you will have a better understanding of how your story is being conveyed.
Then you can go back and alter your original plot.
Take any task that feels too big and break that sucker down until it no longer scares you. You’ve already defeated the formidable foe by taking it down a size.
3 Set Deadlines
You want me to schedule deadlines when im already stressed to my limits? Yes. Once you have broken down each task you need to do- simple enough you can get it done in 5 mins, 30 mins, 1 hour, 2 hours etc.
Now you can plan to fit these chunks into your week.
Setting and completing deadlines make us feel accomplished. Here’s a writing time planner to help you plan your writing in a day.
Showing yourself that you can handle every aspect of this book, but you can do so in a time managing way.
From overwhelmed to achieving goals. That’s one big leap you can comfortably do now.
4 Organize
How disorganized do you feel? Stress about not finding things? Does the stuff around you, on your desk take your attention away when you’re writing?
Do you have too many ideas in different folders, software, apps, written on paper?
Putting these ideas in one place like the Novel Writing Planner (plan/organize our your story, timeline, edits and more). So that you can now never lose, never have to hunt the desk or pc for. Creates a less stressful environment.
Making sure everything has a home to return to and only having out what will help you write calms an overwhelmed mind.
Who can tell you how to organize? Yourself. Where the object feels right to you will fore-fill your needs of decluttering your space and mind, suits you best.
Now you have more energy to be creative and focus on skimming through your notes for the next inspiration in your story!
5 Record What You’ve Achieved – Changing Your Mindset
You’ve sat down at the computer, edited and added scenes but you spent a while contemplating and pondering about what occurs next and the overarching meaning for the piece.
What you’ve taken away from this is- you haven’t done much. There’s not much that’s been finished. Most of the time you thought about how I could do next. Eventually, you settled on an idea. That was a lot of time wasted that I could have done more.
Am I ever going to finish this story if I keep wasting time like this? Stress fills you.
Instead of focusing on what you haven’t done, look at what you have in this session.
I achieved:
- Scene 5 finished
- Edited story
- Finding what happens next
- How this all links with the overarching theme
- I wrote __ many words
Doesn’t that seem so much more positive? Focusing on what you have done.
Sometimes we need to pat ourselves on the shoulder.
AND there’s not a much better way to motivate you when you feel overwhelmed. Seeing plainly all that you have done. Facts over thoughts.
6 Do Like-Minded/Similar Tasks In A Day
Things feel more hectic when you bounce from one activity to another.
Especially when they are completely different. When the task has you using different skills, your mind and body are moving into a different setting. It can also need a jumpstart. We aren’t always ready to jump into an activity and need things to ease ourselves in.
So.. If you’ve decided you want to write and finish a scene. You finish it and move onto your book cover- now your mind has had to change gears and use your knowledge of photo editing and formatting too.
You may get frustrated because you’ve put time aside to do this task and can’t think of how you want it to look, everything you’ve tried doesn’t feel right.
Solution:
1 You could have started this session by sourcing some images that fit in with your niche, what your story looks like. Researching on Pinterest or Google to see how others have chosen to display their cover.
This can give you inspiration and ideas to start with. You’ll also see things you don’t like and choose not to include that in your own design.
2 Winding back, instead of moving to start on a cover design from finishing a scene, you can choose to edit your story with Grammarly. There are countless amount of rewrites in store for a story. Plus, you’re already in the mindset of what you want to write and convey in your story. Going over your text would be a natural small step and using similar skills. Transitioning to this task will be much easier.
How do I find out what tasks use similar skills?
To implement task moving in the same gear, evaluate which of the broken down tasks and deadlines are using the same skills. Choose these to complete in the same day and you’ll see a future less stressed self in no time.
Let me know how if these tips were of use to you in the comments. Until then.
Helpful links to keep in mind:
- Want to learn how to set up the blog fast with all the fundamentals? Click here.
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- Bluehost, one of the most affordable web hosting companies
- Skillshare FREE 30-day trial
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