Blog

Let’s assume you have a new writing project on a subject you’re interested in. You may even have had a series of debates on with your friends, so you are apt with ideas, facts, and all the data you need to execute the project.

 To make it more profound, you have just churned out an impeccable piece a few days back, and you are certain that you’ll relish the new project experience, so you are anxiously waiting to kick it off.

Sadly, as the D day approaches, you postpone with an assurance of commencing on a new date, but as the new date approaches, you lack the energy to open your writing pad. Instead, you feel tired and stressed – you’re experiencing writer’s burnout, not block.

Writer’s burnout is different from writer’s block. Writer’s block is a writer’s inability to churn out words on the blank space before him. Writer’s burnout does not necessarily affect a writer’s ideas of what to write; it attacks his energy and impedes his productivity. 

This happens when you are stressed or overworked for a long period. There are times when work takes its toll on you and affects your ability to deliver your deliverables. Burnout is the exhaustion that comes after a stretch of hard work, irrespective of your profession; it doesn’t diminish your credibility.

However, a writer does not only experience burnout from actually writing alone. Other writing activities, like reviewing a project repeatedly, rewriting a previous work many times, editing different manuscripts, the stress of publishing a manuscript, and the stress of sourcing a viable platform or distribution channels for our work can trigger writer’s burnout.

Signs of Writer’s Burnout

Writer’s burnout is easy to confuse with writer’s block, and so many writers treat writer’s block when they are experiencing burnout. Before answering the question, ‘am I experiencing writer’s burnout?’ you need to understand the signs and symptoms. Some of the signs include:

Depression: Being depressed while doing your job as a writer is a pointer to the fact that you have hit your burnout.

Unfulfillment: There is a liberating experience a writer relishes each time he completes a project. He looks forward to the next one with excitement, but once this feeling is eroded, burnout is gradually taking its toll.

Lack of Interest: Writing is a gratifying experience for a writer; hence every new project is embraced, especially when it’s your genre or an intriguing subject matter. When there is no interest in projects across board, you are suffering from writer’s burnout.

Fatigue: There is no cause for alarm when you feel tired after a hectic day. But when tiredness and exhaustion spill into each passing day and make you unable to do your job, or you feel tired without a clear reason, you need to check it.

Procrastination: Rescheduling a job for a later date is not bad, but when you continuously alter the date without a plausible reason, you’re having burnout.

Lack of Commitment: In this case, you feel unconcerned about your deadlines. You don’t care if you meet up with it or not.

Why Writer’s Burnout Happens

It’s good to have lots of projects on your desk that keep you busy at a very fast pace, but if you don’t slow down, you may experience burnout. Even if you are not overloaded with work, other reasons could cause you to experience writer’s burnout, and some of them are:

High Expectations: In the creative space, you are as good as in your last job. So oftentimes, new projects are usually in competition with the previous projects. When the expectation becomes overwhelming, it can lead to burnout.

Negative Feedback: When a writer’s work is met with constant criticism, it can trigger burnout.

Setting Unrealistic Targets: Even though it is commendable to be goal-oriented, the writing space is a creative space, and as a result, the propelling force the writer needs may not always be under his control. When a writer’s goal is not met, it can cause burnout in the writer.

Absence of Support: A writer saddled with other pressing responsibilities, like child care and its overwhelming demands, without moral, psychological, or financial support can suffer burnout.

Lack of Sleep: Sleep is very important in everyone’s life, including writers. Not getting adequate sleep can cause a writer to burn out.

Stress: Like all other professionals, a stressed writer can develop a subconscious dislike for his job.

Excess Workload: Sitting on numerous projects can trigger a writer’s burnout over time, especially when you have tight delivery dates. Another twist is when a writer writes, edits, proofreads, and does the publishing himself.

How To Overcome Writer’s Burnout

Writer’s burnout is not permanent; you can overcome it with the right approach. Here are some helpful tips:

1. Take a Break: Based on the popular axiom that all work without play makes Jack a dull boy, you can walk off the writing space for a short period and explore other creative mediums. You can go on a vacation, picnic, take swimming lessons, visit the cinema, go on a fishing expedition, etc. This will help you rejuvenate and come back refreshed. Even while working, you can treat yourself to some mini breaks – meditate, relax, or simply take a walk.

2. Have Enough Sleep: Sleep is the most potent remedy for stress. It costs nothing; it’s just for you to tweak your to-do- list and allot extended hours to your sleep. No matter the effort you put in to remedy your burnout, if you are not getting enough sleep, it is a futile effort.

3. Get a Hobby: Your hobby is your escape route from professional stress. However, some writers started writing for fun but now write to make a living, thereby losing the fun aspect of the craft due to tight deadlines. If you fall into this category, find a new hobby and seek the slightest opportunity to savour it.

4. Learn to Turn Down: We are usually scared of turning down some jobs because we do not want to bruise the client’s ego, but this can be detrimental to your competence. When the projects on your desk are overwhelming, take a break from new projects and focus on clearing your slate. Do not bite more than you can chew.

5. Spend Time With Your Loved Ones: There are people who light up our mood anytime, any day. Find time to savour memorable moments with them. Ensure they are the types that support your goals, ready to give you a listening ear and offer a helping hand.

Irrespective of your work, learn to balance your professional and personal life. Create time to spend with your loved ones; that would make life easier and even help you produce quality content.

Let’s know if you’ve ever experienced burnout and what you did to overcome it.

The act of writing is almost incomplete without a good infusion of commas, as commas play an integral part in the writing process. But as commonplace as commas might be to every English language user, there is a clear variation in types when it comes to their usage. Based on this variation, we will be looking at the major types of commas and their applications in sentences.

Before we prod further, let us have a clearer understanding of the general functions of commas in our writing exercises.

WHAT IS A COMMA? A comma is a punctuation mark used to mark divisions or breaks in sentences.

Commas serve as an infusion of air in a sentence; thus, whenever a reader sees a comma, it occurs to the reader that he or she needs to halt and take a breath before proceeding. To this end, we can say that commas make reading less cumbersome and aid the sequential flow of a sentence.

However, the role of commas in writing is beyond the division of letters alone. Imagine reading outrageous figures without a breaker, or a long sentence without a break. When writing large numbers, we break them into three digits to make it easier to read.

Having established the fundamental functions of commas, let’s now go into the meat of this article, which is the difference between an oxford comma and a regular comma.

WHAT IS OXFORD COMMA? An Oxford comma is a comma that comes before the last conjunction in a sentence. It is also known as a series or serial comma. But most times, it is called the Oxford comma because it has been used by Oxford university press – the publishing arm of the renowned British University as far back as 1905. Interestingly, the oxford comma is sometimes referred to as the Harvard comma because it is commonly used by Harvard University Press as well.

It is believed in some quarters to be used because of its stylish feature. However, some writers argue that the Oxford comma is not just used for its stylistic feature but that it also enhances clarity in writing. Therefore, the essential meaning of a sentence can be altered if the Oxford comma is not inputted.

Oxford comma is important for eliminating potential ambiguity, which can tamper with the elegance and clarity of writing. For example:

I sent flowers to my daughters, Chidimma and Folakemi.

The presence of the Oxford comma in the above sentence makes it easier for the reader to understand that I sent flowers to my daughters and two other persons named Chidimma and Folakemi.

 It is for this reason that some writers opine that the Oxford commas make writing more intentional and precise.

Oxford comma also aids clarity when a list consists of complex clauses or terms. For example:

Buy bread and beans cake, mango juice and smoothie, and my mint sweets.

One can notice that without the oxford commas in the sentence, it will be difficult for the reader to understand the above sentence because there are other conjunctions grouping the pairs of things that belong together as single items on the list.

THE REGULAR COMMA: a regular comma is a punctuation mark that indicates the divisions in a particular sentence.

This comma is used to separate clauses, phrases, or words that require a little pause. The regular comma offers more grammatical function and orders the sequential flow of the various components in a sentence. In using a regular comma to separate clauses, the writer must first establish if the clause is dependent or independent.

 For example: After sweeping the room, I washed my clothes.

Instead of: I washed my clothes after I swept the room.

If it is a relative clause, a regular comma suffices if it is non-restrictive. For example:

 I cut down all the almond trees, which were over 8 feet tall.

Instead of: Only the almond trees which were over 8 feet tall were cut down.

More so, a regular comma is used to separate two parts of a sentence. Especially when the second part of the sentence is an independent clause, i.e., a clause that can stand on its own. For example:

Olumide drove to work, but he was unable to drive home.

Note that when the second independent clause is too short, the comma can be omitted. For example:

Stand up and walk out.

A regular comma between clauses also alters the connotation of a sentence. For example:

 We drove around town on a cool day that was refreshing.

 We drove around town, on a cool day,  that was refreshing.

Regular commas are also used to insert parenthetical words and phrases in a sentence.

Suffice to say when it comes to the key indicators of the differences in the two types of commas, the oxford comma is oftentimes seen as a matter of the writer’s preference in style. However, there is no denial of the fact that the two types of commas play significant roles in enhancing the clarity of our writing and making reading our work less choking.

If you found this helpful, check out our other blog post on the comma. (click here)

Writing can be a very tedious process. From the moment of researching to gathering suitable materials to sitting down for long hours with your writing pad to bleed alphabets, it saps a whole lot of energy from you. However, as painstaking as the process may be, how will you feel when all your efforts and sacrifices end up in the dustbin? Well, this is the reality of some writers. After piecing together beautiful ideas, some oversight can become a drawback to the success of your writing. This article will address some of those issues that impede the envisaged result of your writing projects. Some of those red flags are:

1. Use of too many adverbs and adjectives: another spoiler of your writing can be your unnecessary usage of adjectives and adverbs. Overusing these two parts of speech can tamper with your work’s grammaticality and make it difficult to comprehend. Words like suddenly, unknowingly, sadly, etc., should not be overused in your writing.

2. Subject-verb agreement flaws: to have a good writing, the subject and the verb in your sentences must agree with one another in number. If the subject of a sentence is plural, the verb must also be plural. If the subject is singular, the verb must also be singular. For example:

Incorrect: An important part of my academic success have been the teachers who taught me.

Correct: An important part of my academic success has been the teachers who taught me.

3. Omission of comma after an introductory element: infuse a comma after an introductory word, clause or phrase. This gives your reader a slight break, thereby injecting air into your writing to avoid confusion. For example:

Incorrect: In case you don’t know I am the founder of the company.

Correct: In case you don’t know, I am the founder of the company.

4. Lack of character motivation: this can pose a serious problem to many writers when considering the characters to use in your story. Define the role your characters are playing properly. Identify their aim, how they intend to achieve it, and the obstacles they will encounter. However, to make your writing more compelling, you may have to go deeper by providing a background or rationale behind his motive. For example, if you are writing a story about a studious student in a class, you can depict an instance of a student being embarrassed by his siblings for poor performance in an examination or a promise of a vacation abroad as the rationale behind his knack for reading.

5. Absence of a comma in a compound sentence: a comma is used to distinguish two or more independent clauses in a compound sentence separated by a conjunction. The comma usually comes after the first clause before the coordinating conjunction divides the clauses. For example:

Incorrect: Godsent jumped into a red truck and he drove away before being noticed.

Correct: Godsent jumped into a red truck, and he drove away before being noticed.

6. Putting more attention on word count: a lot of writers are guilty of this. Even though it is important you hit the expected word count of a project, it is wrong to water down the quality of your work with noise in a bid to meet your word count. Noise is anything that obstructs the flow of communication, and that includes filler words. It is better to convey the right message in lesser words than to confuse your reader with more words. Always choose quality over quantity when writing.

7. Inconsistent writing: the best way to master a skill is by doing it consistently, and writing is not an exception. You cannot write once in a blue moon and expect to be a master of the craft. Writing regularly also creates a bond between you and your reader. It makes you relatively part of their life. Furthermore, writing consistently can boost your competence and credibility as a writer.

8. Not having a niche: Avoid being like the proverbial Jack of all trades but master of none. As a writer, you are responsible for defining your speciality or beat and building on it. Do not jump on every genre of writing because it will make you play on the periphery of most but the main league of none. Know the broad category of issues that interest you and anchor your writing on a genre. Another plus to this is that you will gradually establish yourself as an authority in the space, thereby becoming one of the most sought-after writers in the space.

9. Absence of a compelling headline or title: your title is the signpost that leads your reader to the content of your work. Once you have a writing task, consider a suitable title or caption that will attract your reader to your work at a glance. To gain more insight on how to write a compelling headline or title, you can visit (visit where?). Consider your project as a meal you are preparing. Before one gets to taste your food, the aroma and the sight of the meal on the plate should whet the person’s appetite.

While some people find writing as an escape from their daily struggles, some have resorted to it as their source of livelihood. But whatever side of the divide you belong to, it is pertinent you pay attention to these minor details in your writing because, as minute as they may seem, they can erode your competence as a writer over time.

If you are interested in more ways to improve your writing skills, read here