Busy Writers: When Does “So Much” Become “Too Much?”
by Jenny Hansen
A few weeks ago, I came across a LinkedIn post that stopped me mid-scroll. A business strategist, Chantel Soumis, asked a deceptively simple question:
“How much is too much?”
Her reflection was honest and beautifully human. She talked about working a full-time job she loves, serving on four boards, staying active in social circles, parenting, and juggling life’s never-ending subplots. Reading the post, I was exhausted FOR her, but she said she genuinely loves all of it.
And yet… loving everything on your plate doesn’t magically give you more hours in the day. Passion doesn’t prevent burnout. Joy doesn’t erase exhaustion.
As writers, we know this struggle. Most of us feel it in our bones. Some of us with chronic illness feel it in multiple places.
A Writer’s Reality: Creativity Doesn’t Respect Your Calendar
Storytelling is not something you turn on and off like a lamp. Stories arrive whenever they want. Characters refuse to behave on your preferred timeline. Your best ideas often show up in the shower, the parking lot, or in Aisle 17 at Walmart.
So, while you’re also navigating work, family, deadlines, friendships, health, caregiving, 43 open tabs in your browser, and the fourteenth urgent email of the day. . .“too much” becomes a real conversation.
5 Grounding Strategies to Help
Chantel offered five grounding strategies to help with the “Too Much,” and they translate wonderfully for writers and creatives. Below is my translation through a writer's lens.
1. Protect your energy like it’s intellectual property.
Your energy is your most valuable writing asset (besides your creativity, of course). Energy is more valuable than your word count, your writing schedule, or your marketing plan.
If you’re running on fumes, the writing suffers. The joy suffers. YOU suffer.
Rest isn’t a reward for finishing everything. Rest is the fuel for creating anything.
2. Align your “yes” with who you’re becoming.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
Writers tend to say yes to everything because we’re curious, compassionate, and often wildly overconfident in our future selves. But every “yes” has a cost.
Neil Gaiman said it perfectly in his 2012 commencement talk. It’s an awesome motivational talk, but here’s the summary of what he says about saying yes to the wrong things.
“Picture your [creative] dream as the distant mountain that you’re traveling to reach. If you believe something will move you closer to the mountain, then do that. But if something will take you further away from the mountain, let that thing go by.”
Say yes to the things that align with where you want to go, not just where you’ve been.
If your week or month or season is about writing a book, protect that time fiercely. This is also true of launching a blog, building your author platform, or formatting your manuscript.
3. Treat commitments like chapters, not life sentences.
Some projects, groups, and obligations are perfect for a time. That doesn’t make them permanent. Saying yes for today doesn’t mean you’ve said yes forever. It’s okay to join, contribute, grow. . .and then turn the page.
Writers evolve. Our needs and our bandwidth change. Even our stories or our genre will change if we let them.
4. Be fully present in the world you’re in.
When you’re writing, write. When you’re with family, be with family. When you’re editing, edit. When you’re resting, rest without allowing guilt to ruin it for you.
Trying to be perfect and present in all your worlds at once keeps you from fully living in any of them.
Your creativity thrives when your presence is anchored.
5. Leave room to be human.
You are not a content machine. You need to be rested, and your creative soul needs to be replenished. The responsibility for that replenishment is up to you. We all recharge differently.
Creativity needs wide margins.
Some of your richest creative insights, and definitely your best writing, come from quiet, unhurried spaces within your life. You are not a word factory. You are a storyteller. And storytellers need space to breathe, think, notice, think some more, and feel.
Bonus Reminder
There are two truths writers that often forget, but desperately need. Perhaps they are just my two truths, but I’m going to share them with you in case they apply to you too:
- You can love every single thing on your calendar and still feel stretched thin.
- You can be grateful for your life and still need boundaries to protect your creativity.
Final Thought
What story are you telling yourself with your life right now? Have you defined for yourself how much is “too much?”
If your days feel overflowing. . .If you’re juggling multiple roles with both joy and exhaustion. . .This post is your invitation to pause.
I’m not suggesting you quit or withdraw. Just pause.
Pause long enough to choose your next step with intention.
Pause because nothing steals a writer’s voice faster than overwhelm. (And nothing strengthens that voice faster than clarity.)
Pause so you can have a quiet moment, all for yourself. Fill it only with what you want, even if it’s just for 15 minutes. Those minutes are precious, and sometimes we forget to take them because we’re busy “doing all the things."
One last word, to give credit where it’s due.
Thank you to Chantel Soumis for sparking this post. I read it at the perfect time: in the middle of a short holiday season, when I needed permission to check in with my own capacity. (Note: it was lacking that day, and I was needlessly pushing it.)
May this post be your reminder that even in the middle of overflowing to-do lists, we can choose to spend some time doing the things that support our own growth, creativity, and well-being.
How do you navigate the busy seasons? What do you say yes to, and what have you learned to let go of? Please share down in the comments. Your story may be the one another writer needs today.
* * * * * *
About Jenny
By day, Jenny Hansen provides brand storytelling, LinkedIn coaching, and copywriting for accountants and financial services firms. By night, she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20+ years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.
Find Jenny here at Writers In the Storm, or online on Facebook or Instagram.
Top photo purchased from Depositphotos.
Original LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chantelsoumis_how-much-is-too-much-its-a-question-i-activity-7401998021661827073-GaQn/
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27 comments on “Busy Writers: When Does “So Much” Become “Too Much?””
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Thank you for this. I needed this because I have overextended myself. Again. And yes, it's all things I enjoy doing, but... yeah. I really appreciate this reminder to pause.
It is SO EASY to overextend ourselves, isn't it? We love to say yes. Yes, makes us feel great...until it doesn't.
Often, I go on a kick where I say no for a while. Just to prove I can do it. Then I have all that time, and the YES creeps back up on me.
Jenny, I need to print this out in a large font and tape it to my wall! Thank you for writing this. I'm feeling stretched because writing business is somehow taking the writing words time, and I have to stop early to spend time with my elderly mother, but I do take time to recharge. Love to lose myself in someone else's fictional world! Merry Christmas!
Jennifer, I hear this from so many of my writing friends who occupy both side in the writing world -- as the writer and the [fill in the blank]. It becomes hard to carve out time for what you WANT to do vs what you HAVE to do.
Maybe fitting in some reading time will fix you right up this holiday season. Or perhaps you can read to your mom when you see her. (Just brainstorming here, on how to fit some more happy fiction into your life!)
This post came at absolutely the right time. I have anxiety anyway. Usually it's very manageable, but through the last couple of weeks, as I've been working toward a book deadline, everything has landed on my plate at once--including our young cat getting injured and needing post-veterinarian care. Writing is my release, my "escape," and by yesterday I was seriously feeling the deprivation. Thank you very much for this reminder to protect my time and space.
Diann, I'm so sorry that pesky anxiety is getting the better of you right now. It's understandable with deadlines and sick kitties on your plate.
I will share that even breathing and just daydreaming for 15 minutes--or laying down on a bed with a book for 20 minutes--can have a major effect on my anxiety levels.
Those small moments are the best part of my day on the overly busy days. Even 20 mins of reading over a meal will do the trick.
This is a good post for someone elderly who needs to figure out how to plan and execute when elderly health, mobility, energy, and perspective are limited. What to say yes to, and what to let go of--
When the energy is running low, the no becomes more powerful. I experienced this when I went through chemo. I had no energy, so I really had to ration it.
I only gave my in-person energy to a few people (my immediate family), and the rest got a Facebook update. That was all I had in me. Plus, maybe some texts. When it HAD to be enough, it was enough. It's so easy to forget that.
Great advice, Jenny.
I love this: "Rest isn’t a reward for finishing everything. Rest is the fuel for creating anything." So true. I'd add that exercise will add to that fuel and get the brain cells dancing.
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to you, Kay! And for sure, exercise helps everything. A 30 minute walk somewhere pretty is a great way to re-charge.
"Timing is everything." I say that a lot, usually as a joking reference to something where the timing wasn't great. But this is no joke; reading this article now was perfect timing. My obligations and commitments for the past year have been a test of endurance, but out of self-preservation, I have recently pulled away from many of them. Now I understand that none of those demands on my creativity were taking me anywhere near my 'mountain,' and I need not feel guilty. I think I'll print these reassuring words and put them up on the wall in front of my desk.
Timing is absolutely everything. I highly recommend you watch that Neil Gaiman commencement speech. It's brilliant. And it completely changed my perspective on what is worth saying yes to.
You don't need to feel guilty at all! Congratulations on setting boundaries around your time and energy. 🙂
Ah, Jenny - you see me. (grin) I live in that space where it is too much, but I love all of it and don't want to let any of it go. I've been really working through trying to cut back, or rather set aside specific times for specific areas so that I get to enjoy those spaces.
I do see you! And you juggle a LOT. I know you love it, but it is still a lot. Hugs (and a card) coming your way. I'm wishing you peace for this whole holiday season.
All I want to do with my extremely low energy due to chronic illness is write the final volume in my mainstream trilogy - and it is FINALLY going forward after over two years of WTH - and it turns out the other person's lack of executive function (ie, managing his stuff, and delivering what he promised ANY time near the deadline has forced me into the position of doing a lot of tax stuff from a prior year RIGHT NOW.
I am beyond hopping mad. And figuring out how to do it, and do it efficiently, and everything else has to STOP - or we lose a lot of money.
Sometimes that happens, you do the best you can, and you HAVE TO LET IT GO afterward or it will flatten you.
Ask me in 2026 if I made it.
Taxes...BLURGH. It's my least favorite thing.
After many many years, I finally have an accountant who gives me year-end planning time, so my own crappy executive function doesn't box me into expensive corners.
I cannot wait to hear "how it all went" in a few weeks. I know you will make it through like a superstar.
We HAVE an accountant, but SO delayed so long with his numbers that our accountant had to tell me yesterday that they are swamped for the end of the year, and wouldn't even promise me to TRY!
Long stories, but it will all be over, win or lose, in less than two weeks - and I'm trying to calm the stress by telling it at least I'M now in CONTROL.
I can fail - and won't have to take the whole blame, as we both know my capabilities.
But SOME IRS deadlines are ironclad, and I have to do our charitable contributions for the year, too, or we lose that deduction.
There are going to be some serious words - and some deadlines - set. He supposedly has ALL his information available by the end of February - and I am going to demand either the three numbers I need or the data spreadsheet to create them myself by then.
I don't like doing this - and he's amazing with everything else - but I CAN. So I will try my darndest, and drop everything else until I have succeeded or failed and the year is over.
Thanks for your support and belief in me, but part of the problem has been a constant stream of medical things all year long, and those hit when they hit. Sigh.
It still sounds dreadful to me, Alicia. Best of luck to you!!!
Thanks. It is.
Funny thing. Since I have ME/CFS, and emotions completely wipe me out, I have a SYSTEM for acknowledging them, accepting them, and then compartmentalizing them so I don't get the physical effects of adrenaline.
I store things like this in Scrivener under titles such as 'Frustration' - and later USE the emotion and the recall in my writing.
I'm not ignoring it, but I'm refusing the devastating physical effect on me.
These are MY emotional IP, emotional capital - I rarely leave my apartment - and I'm entitled to use them however I choose, and choose NOT to react hard physically when they happen (there is ALWAYS a space between the trigger and your reaction).
It's weird. Everything about me and my writing is weird. But it was that, or let random occurrences wipe me out for days.
Most people think they can't do this, but it is as learnable as anything else.
That would be a very valuable skill to have!
Great blog post for me at this time, Jenny. I need to take a step back from certain "obligations." Or at least reassess and choose the ones that move me forward to my goals.
Good for you, Barb. It's so important to reassess once in a while. Things that were once uber-important become not-so-much important as time goes on.
I love seeing you here at WITS! Happiest of holidays to you!!
This is profound. I shared your link with my Aspiring Memoir Writers email list. Thank you for your insight.
Thanks so much for sharing, Carolyn! I really hope your Aspiring Memoir Writers enjoy it. I too write memoir. 🙂
Sometimes, you have to let go.
I had a book come out on 12/15. Christmas wasn't quite done. So that's why I'm writing this now. Probably no one will see it.
But the book did really well and still is doing well. Best ever.
I see it, Denise! And I think it is FABULOUS that your book did great. Congratulations!
Thank you, Jenny!