The Symptoms
1) You’re drained. There comes a moment in every writer’s career when they’ve pushed themselves so hard to accomplish things that their mental and emotional self can’t keep up anymore. You tire easily and can’t see yourself writing another word.
2) Writing no longer holds your attention. There will always be those moments when you are working on a story or article and you realized that it no longer interests you. But writer burn out is when you start to lose interest in your work and you can’t see yourself continue with anything else.
3) The thought of writing fills you with dread. Working becomes harder and harder. Writing becomes stress in overdrive.
6 Tips To Avoid Writer Burn Out
1) Do something active. If the words refuse to come, doing something active can help to reboot your mind or give you a chance away from your writing to think about it. Take a walk, exercise, or do some housework.
2) Explore new topics or styles of writing. You can also change topic, stories, scenes, or even genres. A change of scenery, even if it’s just in your writing, can help stave off writer burn out.
3) Schedule one or more days off each week. This mini vacation will not only allow you to catch up on the house or yard work, but give you a break to renew your batteries and keep you from overworking yourself.
4) Take a break. You can take a spend some time with family or friends, 10 minute break, a reading break, a stretch break, meditate, take a nap, or watch a movie.
5) Don’t overload yourself. It can be so easy to take on more than we can handle. Between the writing, promoting, blogging, other jobs, housework, and social networking, it can be too much if we don’t space it out. Scheduling when to do something and giving yourself app time to accomplish it can keep stress at bay.
How do you ward off writer burn out? What to do when you already have writer burn out?
Tune in next week for Recovering from Writer’s Burn Out.
Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors 
Excellent advice! I think people – artists, writers, you name it – can only out out so much with out taking something in. And when you’ve reached your limit it’s time to recharge – go read a book, or watch a movie or something else that puts ideas and inspiration back into you. When I get burnt out, I usually try for an anime watching day 😉
You are right. It happens to all artists, as well as accountants, doctors, and politicans. There is always that moment when the job is no longer fun. Though I think that if we fix the problem before we get to that point burn out won’t last as long. My sister is an anime fan too. It’s how she copes with the world. I never did get into them, but then I’m not much of a movie or TV person 😀