Burnout. Everyone gets it it from time to time.

Everyone except for me. At least, not until this past year. I’ve never had burnout quite like this before. And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure why or how I got it. It just…happened.

2022 was an exciting and exhausting year for me. Did you know that I actually published THREE books last year?

Harrowed Blade (4/5), Sun Maker (4/26), and Breaking Colossus (12/16).

That was rough.

There are authors who publish a book a month, and I honestly can’t fathom how they do it. I wrote them over the summer of 2021, and I had to get them ready for publication in the fall of 2021 and spring of 2022. All in all, it took me about 8 months to get them ready.

Breaking Colossus was another beast of a book. I wanted to market the crap out of it. I wanted it to be a bestseller.

But something broke down somewhere in August or September. I had just moved to New Mexico and was under a lot of financial stress. Facebook ads weren’t working and were expensive. Amazon ads were expensive. I read stories about how other authors writing in my same genre were paying $10,000 a month on ads. I could barely afford $100 a month.

I may have ran into the “comparison” problem that most creatives have. Whatever the case may be, I became paralyzed with self-doubt sometime around October. I lost all confidence in myself along with all the energy I’d built up in the beginning of the year. My marketing was a flop. BC has yet to receive a single review.

I’m simply tired. That’s all.

The stress I’d had during the self-publishing process reached a breaking point this past December, and I gave up on ads altogether. I gave up on promotion. I don’t have the stamina to do it anymore. I would prefer to spend what little energy I have writing and pay someone else to do the business side of things. But as it stands, I can’t afford to hire anyone for a while.

So, my goal is to go the traditional route for now. My next book will likely be traditionally published.

I will try to get an agent and get my books and writing published through publishing companies. They can pay for the marketing. They can do all the advertising. I won’t have to do any of that stuff anymore.

So apparently this is what happens when I get burnout. I don’t sacrifice the writing. I just realizes that I’m not an entrepreneur and I sacrifice the expensive business side of things.

Now I can focus my efforts elsewhere.

More news soon on what projects I have lined up for the future.