I’m tired. I’ve written myself to a standstill. This is a writer burn out. Writing for nearly 20 years. I’ve found myself considering writing the kind of stuff that I never wanted to write, So I have stopped writing.

This is a post for all writers and bloggers who have nothing left to say but who still have everything left to say. You may lack inclination and inspiration, but there is a whole world out there that has to be written about.

I don’t know if you have ever had this. It used to be called « writers’ block » I prefer to use a more modern term, « writers’ burn out. »

The worst ever thing you can do for your writing is to actually write, in this I mean writing too much about one theme and dedicating too much time to one single writing venture.

So, I wrote my book, which was supposed to be …

Well that’s the thing, when you start a writing project you first have to define your parameters and then stick to them like shit to a blanket. Don’t diversify and hold true.

I started with no parameters and then I wrote a book that exhausted me in writing terms and now, I find that I can’t write anymore. It’s not that there is nothing left to say. There is always something to write about, but, I have written myself out. I have done a writing burn out.

I’ve lost the writing reflex that we all get. You know you are somewhere exciting or just everyday, something normal or abnormal can happen, but you get a writers’ perspective on the sitiation. You can be down the supermarket, down the train station or just at work. You can see someone in the street and there is a spark that makes you want to write. Well I have lost that spark. I guess it is like the photographer who loses his sixth sense.

Give you an example – used to watch my fellow shoppers at the supermarket, loading their stuff on the conveyor belt at the till. I would observe the person. I would observe what they were buying. I would make guesses about their lives.

Example The fat guy on a Friday night with 2 frozen pizzas, two bottles of wine, one cleaning product and a « photography » magazine – oh yes you live alone, and hey you are planning an evening at home on your own.

I have lost that perception about my fellow checkout mates. I find that I have lost a lot of perceptive faculties, basically because I had one vast writing project and now it is over.

There is one last thing. There is nothing around that makes me want to wrtite and after ten years of blogging and 20 years of journalism , I don’t konow what there is left to write about.

I have also lost my writing reason. I want to write oblique chronicles on life that make you laugh, though I haven’t laughed so much in a long time. Not a small « intellectual » laugh, but a good belly laugh that laeves you reeling and peeling with good humour.

So, by this post, after the publication and dépression that goes with it. I guess that getting published and then writing after is just like getting post-natal blues. You fuck around with your book and then you get the book you get and because it is your child it is the best baby in the world, but there is one born every minute …

So, trying to get back from a writing burn out;

And  for  the fat guy with the frozen pizzas . I wish you happy wanking, which is just another form  of blogging.