Avoiding Burnout & Using Voice Dictation
Hello, MsBrowns family, and welcome back to the "AllAboutBooks" blog.
It’s NotesOnDawn, checking in from the trenches of my 70-day writing challenge. Today is Day 53/70, which means I am... checks calendar... 18 days into this journey. The countdown is well and truly on.
The aesthetic for this update, as you might have seen from my Instagram reel, is very much 🍊🍵📝. Oranges for the vitamins, tea for the comfort, and the notebook... well, the notebook is trying its best.
Because if I am to be completely, 100% honest with you all, this update is about not writing. It's about what happens when your grand creative plans collide, head-on, with the immovable object of real, unglamorous, everyday life.
The last couple of weeks have been ROUGH. And the next two weeks commencing look to be just as bad. This is the reality of trying to be a #writer while also being a #person-with-a-job-and-a-body.
And the biggest lesson I’ve learned in the last 18 days has nothing to do with plot or prose. It’s that not doing anything is, perhaps, the most important part of the entire challenge.
The Perfect Storm: When Life Says "No"
When I started this challenge, I was full of adrenaline. I had my new "measured and honest" philosophy. I was excited to build a routine.
Life, as it often does, laughed at my plans.
First, there’s the 9-to-5. I’ve spoken before about how my job is demanding, but this past fortnight has been a different level. It’s that specific kind of "busy" that leaves you feeling hollowed out. It’s not just the hours; it's the brain drain. I’ve been ending my workdays with my mind feeling like a wrung-out sponge. There is simply no creative juice left. The well is dry.
And, of course, life loves to pile on. On top of the work chaos, my body decided to join the party. I’ve been "flirting with a cold" for about a week, you know the feeling. That awful, low-grade malaise where you’re not sick enough to take a day off, but you’re operating at about 60% capacity. Every simple task feels like walking uphill through treacle.
And to complete the trifecta of low energy: my period is approaching. For me, and I know for many others, this is not a minor inconvenience. It’s a genuine physiological event that brings with it brain fog, exhaustion, and a complete inability to form a coherent, creative thought.
So, to recap: my brain is fried from work, my body is fighting off an illness, and my hormones are pulling the emergency brake.
The result? I have been feeling very low on energy for anything apart from taking care of myself.
The Ghost of Burnout Past (And Why I’m Ignoring It)
This is the exact point where every other writing challenge I've ever attempted has died.
The NotesOnDawn of 2023, or even 2024, would be handling this completely differently. She would be "super bummed out" that she hadn't started on a "stronger" note. She would be looking at the 18 days passed and counting how many of them had a zero-word count.
She would be drowning in guilt.
And what does guilt do? It breeds panic. Panicked, "Old Me" would have done the stupidest thing possible: she would have tried to "push myself harder."
She would have ignored the cold, ignored the fatigue, ignored the brain-fog. She would have loaded up on caffeine at 9 PM and stared at the laptop, trying to force the magic to come. She would have written 1,000 words of pure, unfiltered garbage, hated every second of it, and then collapsed into bed feeling even more exhausted and resentful.
The result would be inevitable: a quicker, harder burn out.
The challenge would be over before it began. I would have associated the short story collection with guilt, stress, and failure. And that folder would sit on my desktop, untouched, for another six months.
The New Strategy: Radical, Intentional Rest
I’m so glad, and so proud, to say that I am not that writer anymore. My new "measured and honest" approach applies to my life, not just my writing.
So, what did I do when this perfect storm hit?
"i listened to myself and just didnt do anything !!"
I didn't open the laptop. I didn't even look at my notebook.
Instead, I made the tea. I ate the oranges. I took a bath. I went to bed at 9:30 PM. I prioritised taking care of the human animal that is responsible for producing the writing. I gave my brain and my body the sick leave they were crying out for, even if my 9-to-5 wouldn't let me.
This isn't failure. This isn't "giving up." This is a strategic, creative choice.
You cannot pour from an empty cup. You cannot build a magical world when your own world is on fire. By resting, I wasn't abandoning the challenge; I was protecting it. I was protecting my long-term relationship with this project. I was ensuring that when I did have the energy to return to it, I would do so with joy, not resentment.
This is the single most important piece of advice I can offer anyone in our "AllAboutBooks" community who is also a writer: Learning to rest is as important as learning to write.
The Breakthrough: Discovering a New (Old) Tool
And here is the magic. After several days of "just not doing anything," a little flicker of energy returned.
Today, I felt it. A little spark. An idea. The desire to write.
But I still felt... low. Still tired. The idea of sitting upright at my desk and typing felt like too much. The act of handwriting felt too slow for the idea that was forming.
So I did something I always forget I can do. I picked up my phone, opened a blank note, and I used voice dictation.
I always, always forget this is a tool I can use. And I always forget how ridiculously useful it is. Especially, as I said, "for someone whose process of processing is all over the place!!"
I am a chaotic, non-linear writer. My brain, as I've mentioned, works in webs and jumps. And voice dictation is, quite possibly, the perfect tool for a brain like mine.
Why Voice Dictation is a Game-Changer (My Expertise):
It Silences the Inner Editor: The biggest enemy of a first draught is that internal voice telling you "that sentence is clunky," "that's a stupid word," "you're a terrible writer." When you are speaking a story, you move too fast for that editor to keep up. You are in pure creation mode. You're not looking at a blank page; you're just talking. It bypasses the "perfectionism" part of the brain entirely.
It’s Phenomenal for Low-Energy Days: This is the big one. I was literally bundled in a blanket on my sofa, "flirting with my cold," and still writing. I didn't have to sit up. I didn't have to engage my typing muscles. I just... spoke. It allowed me to capture the creative spark without demanding a physical toll I couldn't pay.
It Captures a Natural Voice: We speak so differently from how we type. Our spoken cadence is more natural, more rhythmic. This is an absolute gift for writing dialogue. But it’s also great for just finding the prose rhythm of a piece. The words flow in a more authentic way.
It’s the Ultimate "Brain Dump": As a non-linear person, I just spoke the story as it came. I'd say a line of dialogue. Then I'd say, "New paragraph. The room was cold." Then I'd say, "Oh, I need to remember that the main character's hands are blue." It's all over the place, it's messy, and it's perfect. It's a transcript of my creative mind, which I can then go back and transcribe and edit (my favourite part, as you know).
The result? I worked on one of my newer stories. The transcript is probably 70% nonsense. But in that 30%? Pure gold. I've "fallen into a groove for this story," a groove I wouldn't have found if I'd tried to force myself to "write properly" at a desk.
This one, low-energy tool broke through my creative block and got me excited again.
Onwards: The Groove is Back
So, Day 18 (or 53/70) ends on a high. I am still tired. My job is still going to be "ROUGHHH."
But I have a secret weapon. I have the power of strategic rest. And I have the power of voice dictation.
I feel that pull again. I "really want to spend time on" this story. I am hoping to find some pockets of time next week, between the chaos, to get back into that groove.
The challenge isn't broken. It just bent, as it should, to the shape of my real life.
Until next time. Be kind to yourselves, and be kind to your writing.
NotesOnDawn