Burnout and links

Last week on Monday and Tuesday I felt great. Energetic, productive, creative. I was able to do contract work and my own work and ISBW content and all sorts of things. I wrote thousands of words, I did housework and errands, I thought I was on a roll. But then I crashed on Wednesday and have been barely productive for the rest of the week. I was puzzled till I realized I had burned out. I pushed it too hard.

I do this most often when I’m sick. I’ll get sick, then start to feel better and think, ‘Hey, I’m better, I can now go do errands and play with the kiddo and stay up late and… and…’ and then the next day I’ll feel like crap again.

So now I wonder how I strike that balance between being reasonably productive and not pushing myself so hard that I burn out. I’ll be working on that this week. I guess if I want to get to the point where I can write 3K words a day, then I need to work up to it gradually. Something new to work on.

Pants went pretty well this week, though.

Oh, and I have no freaking clue why iTunes is missing two of the recent episodes. I’m trying everything I know how to do. If you’re an RSS guru, or an iTunes guru, please email me. I may have to resort to reposting the episodes if I can’t get it to work.

Links:

• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Authors – advice so useful that it’s mind-boggling. Simple, too. Numbers 5 and 7, “Have a plan” and “When the bus stops, get on” are very apropos to me right now.
• Pimp My Novel – a new blog from the POV of a sales associate in a publishing house. What happens after your book is aquired, marketing advice, etc.
• Skype an Author Network – I’m so excited about this! A network to provide K-12 teachers and librarians a way to connect children’s and YA authors, books, and young readers through virtual visits.
• And a couple of ego links: I was interviewed on the “Takes and troubles times of a hungry writer” blog, I appeared on Mark Jeffrey’s Bibliotech video podcast interview show recently, and my Author Page is live on Amazon.com!

Writing prompt for July 19: The self-help and diet sections of the local book store disappear. Chaos? Or people start to think for themselves?”