Hey everyone! I am back again with the second to last post on the writer’s self-care series. I hope that this post is helpful for some and that it can help you to care for yourself and the writers around you. So, without further ado…
Care for Writers: Protection
The last part of the definition of Care that I laid out at the beginning of this series was protection. This part of the definition of care definitely is super important but isn’t quite as important as some of the other parts of self-care. Protection is more the last part of care that you can take care of once you are already caring for your health, welfare, and maintenance of the previous two.
But what kind of protection does a writer need? Protection from overwork! Many of the writers I know, including myself, have a hard time regulating the amount of writing that we do. We will either spend almost no time writing or will spend too much time writing with not much between those two. If you are not protecting yourself from overwork, it is much harder to maintain things like health and welfare which can lead to bigger issues down the road.
Some of the ways to protect yourself from overwork go back to the previous section on maintenance. A lot of the protection from overwork lines up perfectly with maintenance of physical health such as taking breaks, setting a schedule, and even just setting a writing goal and taking a break once you have reached it.
One other thing that a lot of writers need to protect themselves from for the sake of self-care is fans. Your fans, those who follow and enjoy your books and stories, can be the most amazing thing to ever happen or one of the most stressful – it really just depends on the environment of your fandom. Some fans are what I personally call ‘feral’ fans. They are so invested in being fans of a story that they forget the writer writing the story is a person too. These types of fans demand the next chapter, the next book, the snippet and this can quickly become very overwhelming and stressful if you are not protecting yourself from these fans.
When it comes to feral fans, my suggestion is to make it very clear what your schedule looks like. If you are a serial writer – make it very clear when you update or how often you update and leave it at that. Often times when a writer does this, they will either have fans stand up for them to feral fans or they will simply find a list of fans to block. If you are a novel writer – find a way to keep your feral fans up to date on the writing process if you can. I’ve found that this helps them not only to imagine a timeline for the next book but also gives them a way to see that you are a normal person. I follow many of my favorite authors on their YouTube, Goodreads, social media, or Blog accounts to keep up to date on when the next book will be published and how they are doing in the writing process.
The second type of fan that you might need to protect yourself from is the enthusiastic fan. This is not to be confused with the feral fan. Feral fans don’t seem to care about the creator of a story as much as they care for the story. Enthusiastic fans care a lot about the writer to the point that sometimes it might feel like a breach of privacy. Sometimes writers need to protect themselves from overly enthusiastic fans by taking breaks from social media, setting clear boundaries on what kinds of messages and fan mail they will receive, and being careful with the content that they curate.
There are a lot of other things that might come up in your own individual life as a writer that you might need to protect yourself from for your own personal self-care. It is never wrong to take a break from someone or something to try and gather yourself before addressing it again. Protecting yourself from things is also an important part of self-care.
That’s all I’ve got for this week. I hope this post was helpful and I hope that someone out there found some peace, hope, or ideas through it. I’ve seen a lot of writers struggle with protecting themselves as a form of self-care, so I know it’s an issue a lot of writers face. Next week will be just a short post on some last notes on self-care before we start some stand-alone posts. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, become a blog page member, share, and follow me on social media at the links below. And remember,
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!