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Blog Briefs: On Burnout, with Rob Hood

In which a bunch of authors & editors are invited to answer the question: How do you deal with creative exhaustion?

Author Rob Hood once told me to aim for just one sentence a day. It’s often achievable even in the most desperate state, & it can lead to much more.

 

If you’ve got a deadline and you’re stuck in the middle of the story, try taking Raymond Chandler’s advice: have someone kick in the door and burst into the room, guns blazing (metaphorically, of course). Injecting something left-field into the stalled plot-line often gets the brain — and the story — working again, even if it changes its direction.

 

Robert Hood has written many short stories and a few novels.