A Recap of My First Two Years of Writing (Again): On Writing, Learnings, and Burnout.

Probably the first time I write more in English/Chinese than in PHP/Objective-C for a while.

Photo by NEOSiAM 2024+

This is my second attempt at being a writer.

The last time was almost 10 years ago.

I was just a high school student. No income, no real skillset to make a living, and my secret crush was on track for a successful career as a straight-A student. I loved writing, but you can’t blame an insecure high school kid for giving up on their dream. (More on this in my previous essay: A Love Letter to Writing.)

Now, nearly 10 years later, after putting (some of) my shit together—stabilizing my career/income and having married my secret crush—revisiting the writer side of me has become a priority.

Rehabilitation (mid-2023)

State of mind: 😍

I started my second attempt at a “writing career” by doing the easiest thing possible: rehabilitation.

I simply re-wrote “魔法狼煙“, the last novel I wrote 10 years ago, after a summer workcation in Budapest and finishing Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series.

It was a half-developed fantasy short story meant to be the first part of a trilogy. I never got to the second part, but the story had elements I loved about Mistborn. Re-writing something I’ve already finished gets me easy and quick access to dopamine things like:

1. A reminder of what “writing a novel” feels like – Exciting and comforting. I could focus 100%, and completely immerse myself in the flow. Like it was what I was born to do.

2. A chance to focus on the craft without the heavy lifting of brainstorming a brand-new story.

The rewrite didn’t attract many readers, but it did what I needed at the time—it was a lot of fun (!!).

And I was reminded that “writing” is still something I love.

Learning the Craft and Starting a New Trilogy (early 2024)

State of mind: 🥰 → 🤨 → 🧐

Then in early 2024, I spent a bunch of time reading and nerding the craft of story- and world-building. If you’re curious, some of my favorite resources so far are:

1. Brandon Sanderson’s Creative Writing courses.

2. David Perell’s How I Write podcast. My favorite episodes are the ones on “ChatGPT and Writing” with Same Altman, “The Craft of Stories” with Amor Towles, and “Mastering Storytelling” with Shaan Puri.

3. Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

4. Timothy Hickson’s On Writing and Worldbuilding series.

In the meantime, I began developing a new story: a fantasy trilogy.

I was—and still am—excited about the story. But in hindsight, I think I started writing it too early and a bit too prematurely. I had rough ideas of the world settings and characters (but I don’t know them too well!), and hadn’t even had a complete outline of the plot.

I told myself I’d be the Gardener-type writer.

And I just started writing and explored the story as I wrote.

But soon, I realized there was an issue, that I’m actually an Architect-type writer. I needed an outline. Or, by the time I finished Chapter 2, there was already something I’d like to fix and re-write in Chapter 1. And when I get to Chapter 3, there would be something new I’d like to hint back at in Chapter 2, etc. You get the idea.

Eventually, I stopped feeling a sense of progress in writing this new story. The growth stagnated in both the word count and readership count.

And I burned myself out (will talk about this again later).

I felt like I was making motion, but not progress.

Blogging, Personal Essays, and Write of Passage (mid-to-late 2024)

State of mind: 🥰 → 😓 → 🤯

Separately, I also started blogging about my life.

I know I’m incredibly lucky—working in Silicon Valley with my dream job—and I want to be grateful for that. I mostly am. But there are times I can’t, because I’m also far away from family, witnessing them and myself age, and spending time writing novels that nobody reads.

Writing personal essays is one of my attempts to make progress, towards finding peace with all of these.

I started off writing one post every month on Ghost (ended up migrating to Substack in December 2024).

I had 9 subscribers, all of them were different accounts of myself, my wife, my parents, and some close friends.

But, again, during that process, I learned something new about myself. I needed to feel a sense of progress, even for these personal essays in my blog. With the stagnated growth of readers and purpose, it felt like I was writing into the void.

It became clear to me that I needed a community I could write with.

Then I found Write of Passage. You can read more about my experience in the writing bootcamp in my previous post: My Write of Passage Experience: Lessons, Community, and Favorite Essays.

In short, Write of Passage gave me what I needed to keep going and improve.

I found my people.

But it also contributed to my burnout.

Burning Out, Taking a Break, and Looking Forward to 2025

State of mind: 🫥 → 🙂

By late 2024, I was burned out—balancing work, writing novels and blogs, and spending 10+ hours weekly on Write of Passage.

I lost the motivation to do things I would normally see as playing, e.g. coding, writing, and having conversations with friends and family about “what’s good” because there was nothing good.

I restarted my mental therapy, and fortunately, I also had the luxury of taking almost all of December off work.

My wife and I went back to Taiwan for a month. We did a few things to reset.

1. We spent time with our family.

2. She paused her YouTube content, and I stopped writing novels (though I kept writing blog posts to help process my thoughts).

3. I also talked to a few friends/experts about “writing”. All these conversations make me more convinced about how I want “writing” to be a part of my identity.

4. Knowing that I’m an architect-type writer, I also restarted outlining the fantasy novel. I decided to treat the 60,000 words I wrote in 2024 as a blueprint, and outlined a brand-new 3-act structure plot.

With the new outline, I will need to restart writing this novel, but I think it will be quicker (and more satisfying) since most of the 60,000 words are reusable, and I can finally fix everything I’ve wanted to fix for a while.

Knowing what I need (i.e. an outline for my novels, a community of writers, and a more sustainable writing system) and having met these demands with a somewhat solid outline, the community and friends I make in Write of Passage, Penana, and Substack… I’m very looking forward to 2025.

(I think) I’m mostly recovered from the burnout now.

I’ll know more about that next week after I’m fully back to work and writing. But things are looking good.

And I’m just really glad that I restarted writing, again.