Following on from the previous two posts, I’ve been wondering other things about my writing.

As mentioned, when talking about burnout, I felt I had lost my mojo with descriptions and action.

The way I wrote the Porn Stars Brothers family saga with their touchy feely vibe, the words I used to describe their actions and motions were magical, but were gone when I wrote Anything for You, and Burning Desires, and still somewhat gone in the Blue Bloods duology.

I can even pinpoint the years for it all.

2019, 2020, 2021 was the start.

In 2020, while writing the last Porn Stars novel, the thought of writing shorter novels came to me.

In mid-2021, I realised I had burnout and could pinpoint it to mid-2019 while writing Spiros & Jenny from the Porn Star series, so I started doing something about it with re-organising my business. In 2021, I only wrote the sixth set of Wrathbone stories, but had the ideas for Blue Bloods and Anything for You. At this point, it had been two years of burnout.

Moving into 2022, I hadn’t written a novel in two years and started writing book one of the BB duology early on, but moved onto AFY because I hadn’t written a duology before and needed time to figure out how to write it the way I had imagined with dual timelines.

It was now three years of burnout, but about to be three years of cataclysmic mind fuckery of writing adult after two years away.

I forced myself to write AFY. I had my outline and my characters, my beginning and end. But the mind fuckery of my brain threw a shit fit and I argued with it constantly.

The story was coming somewhat easily, but I couldn’t write as easily as I used to. I needed better pens, something that flowed smoothly so my poor arthritic hand didn’t throw its own shit fit. I needed a pen grip to position my fingers properly and give them some soft comfort for their pain that arthritis was now throwing up on the daily regardless of pain meds. Oh, woe is me!

I wrote one whole A4 120 page notebook (technically a 240 page but I only write on the right side) and started on the second. Three pages in I threw a shit fit and decided I was done wasting time and energy with writing and chose to type up the rest of the novel. I needed to cut out one of the layers of my writing as I also had to type the damn things up and that was time consuming in itself. A layer needed to be gone to save time and energy.

My arguments with myself about writing long novels kicked into high gear.

I didn’t want to write three A4 notebooks for a novel anymore. I wanted to skip the entire writing part and just type up my books.

I got a thrill out of that thought and churned through the book. But my writing was stiff, and still off. I wasn’t hitting the dot-to-dot puzzle dots in order and I lurched through it with no brain-hand connection. But I still got it typed up. And I still wondered what the hell was wrong with me.

Lurching into 2023, I started the year by writing what became Burning Desires. I hated it. I spent two months writing sporadically, took two months off to upgrade three websites and close down two more to clear out the remaining burnout which helped tremendously, and got back to it in June. And I still hated it.

The realisation that I still had a hatred of writing long books, and didn’t want to do them anymore hit hard. I had stories to tell, and how the hell was I going to tell them? I struggled through that four-year-old story and finished it. And what do you know? It was a short book. But was it good? Not by my descriptive standards. But it’s decent.

That was two books in two years that didn’t feel right.

2022 and 2023.

I questioned, I purged my brain for answers, I read books on writing, I talked about it in my writers’ group. But I still couldn’t figure it out.

In late 2023, I wrote book one of the BB duology. It was better. I had the mental energy for a two-year-old idea because I threw out the whole concept of the timeline between the two books and just wrote book one so it could be what it was meant to be. But there were still issues.

Moving into 2024, I wrote the second book in the duology, and while it was okay, there was still something. I had left it too long between books and should have written it straight after book one. But I didn’t. It was over four months between the two. Not good.

Later in 2024, I wrote a cop show novella trilogy (120 pages apiece) and things were better. Lighter, but by the third book I was struggling. I was done with it and wanted it to be over. It was taking too long. 36 days across three months. Three freakin months! 12 days per novella each month. That was way too long. The novels had only taken me 25-26 days across six weeks apiece. And I still argued with myself about what the problem was.

And then in 2025, after asking my editor for her thoughts and reading what she wrote, I remembered that every year I’ve had some kind of epiphany. No, I’m loathe to use that word.

Revelation? No.

Realisation? That’s better, even though it’s a definition of epiphany…

I’ve had a realisation about my writing every year since 2022 and this year’s no different.

In 2022, I argued about how to write and how long to write.

I gave up arguing and had the realisation I was just meant to write books of whatever length they came to me. Long or short.

Period. End of.

In 2023, I finally gave up arguing and had the realisation that I was just meant to write by hand and not type. The brain-hand connection so many authors talk about that gives a more personal feel to writing, was just me. It’s what I do.

Period. End of.

BUT!

In 2025, I also need to understand that with my arthritis growing worse every year, and other pain issues that keep cropping up, writing longhand won’t be doable in the long term anymore. At some point, I will give typing another go. Probably this year, if it hasn’t happened already.

In 2024, I gave up arguing and had the realisation that I will never write like other authors.

You know how you can read a book and go, “damn, I wish I could write like that”. I was doing that. Looking for “that” and what “that” was. But I never found it and finally came to the realisation I had to stop looking for it because I was never going to find it. I have the writing skills that I have, the English skills that I have, and while I can always improve, and have over the last 20 years, I will always write how I write. In “my style”. In “my way”. It’s easy to read, simple and basic English.

Regardless of how hard it is moving forward.

Period. End of.

In 2025, I asked my editor about my writing, and thanks to her had the realisation that the emotional tone of my work was missing because I didn’t “love” my characters anymore. They were cold, not warm like the PSB family that was pure magic. And it was. It was magic to write and came so fast and so well it still surprises me. The books I’ve written since have been nowhere near that.

And it made sense.

My stand-alone novels will always be different to the PSB series. I write about single women finding love, not a family that already has it. Something I wish I had in real life.

I guess every answer comes at the time you need it. And while each might make things a little easier, I really wish they had all come at the same time so I could have done something about it in 2022 and made every novel I’ve written since better.

As I said at the end my last post, right place, right time for when it was needed most, I guess.

~~~~~~

A little timeline fun. As we are now 2025, it’s been ten years since this started. Not the burnout, but the writing full bore across two main names, writing, typing, editing, formatting, publishing.

Non-freakin-stop.

I wrote across two names from 2015 to 2019, the year the burnout started. Four years of writing and releasing non-stop.

From 2019 to 2023 was burnout and spits and spats of writing and finishing off other formats, and culling and cutting social media, businesses, and corralling everything having to do with writing and pen names under my name and website.

Three years into burnout, in 2022, the mind fuckery started when I went back to writing adult fiction and continued to 2025. Three years of trying to figure out what the hell happened after Porn Stars and how the hell I lost my writing mojo.

Ten years.

I even did a little graph for it.

 

Hopefully, with the plan and formula below, it’s over. We’ll see how much of the to-do list is done at the end of the year!