Wait, I Have to Do This Again?: Post-AMM Writing Fatigue

As many of you already know, I was chosen for Round 7 of Author Mentor Match this past March. It’s been a completely wild experience and I’ve loved every second with my wonderful mentor and all my mentee-peers. While I have no complaints about AMM and I am certainly grateful for the opportunity, there is something I want to talk to you about, dear readers, and it is this:

POST-AMM/PITCHWARS/MENTORSHIP FATIGUE.

That’s right, friends. We’re here today to talk about how damn exhausted I am.

This comes after four solid months of doing nothing but rewriting and revising MIDNIGHT AT THE NEON TIGER.  I am not yanking your chain when I say this is all I did. We were living in Quarantine Hell and I had a lot of free time on my hands, so what did I do? I revised. And rewrote. And worked and worked and worked until I thought I couldn’t work anymore.

NEON TIGER was not an easy book to revise. It didn’t require smaller changes. It required whole rewrites two separate times, plus line edits.  This was a huge undertaking and while I was up to the task, it was a lot of hard work. I think back on it now and shudder a little, because whew, it was a lot.

Of course, I would do it all over again if I had to.

I only just finished my last round of line edits at the beginning of July. I am now in the querying phase. What do most people tell you to do when querying? Write something else! Yeah! Sounds great!

Except…

I spent four months doing nothing but revising a book. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was by it until I didn’t have to revise anymore. Are more revisions coming in the future? Sure! But will they be as extensive as my AMM revisions? Probably not. And yet, as I sit here and write this, I can’t tell you that I’ve been working on anything new. I haven’t been. At all. I’ve had plenty of new ideas and plenty of things I could theoretically work on, but for some reason, I can’t make myself do any of it.

Because all I keep thinking about is this: Wow, I have to do this all over again?

I have to draft a book all over again? I have to revise a book all over again?

Now, this isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve written five complete manuscripts. NEON TIGER. however, is the one I’ve worked on the most. I have poured my  heart and my soul and my blood and my sweat and my tears into that book. I love it and I think it’s been made 200 times better by what I did in AMM.

However…

I haven’t written anything new. Frankly, I am burnt out by AMM. The constant work has taken a toll on my creative health. It’s also rattled me in ways I didn’t respect. What if I can never write a book again? What if NEON TIGER was a one time thing? What if I suck now because I can’t write another book?

These are all irrational questions but ones I’m sure many of us in mentorship programs can admit to asking ourselves. Unlike PitchWars, AMM thankfully doesn’t have a time limit, but I gave myself a time limit anyway because that’s how I push myself. I need deadlines to survive.

Without one, I am floundering a little. I feel frustrated with myself for not writing more, frustrated with my own fear, frustrated with querying, frustrated with everything.

Maybe the solution is obvious. Maybe I need to give myself more of a break/

Because, yes, I will have to write another book one day. I will have to “start over.”

I’ll get there.

It might just take a little more time.