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Sundays on the Bayou🌊☁

Your Weekly Dispatch from Soul

Good morning, cousins.

I know, I’m kinda late today. I’ve been having some revelations over the past week and it’s caused me to be in deep thought for a few days. Nothing bad at all, just me working through my writer life and what I’m feeling called to do. Today will be less general and more personal — so if you were looking for some life advice, sorry! Not today. LOL.

So sit back, grab your coffee and lets chat for a bit.

Creative Burnout — Revelations & Changes

So I realized something over the past week and it made me sad to realize it, but it was something I had to stop ignoring. What made me come to this realization? Well, you can thank my Environmental Injustice essay and my article in the Times Picayune that was published back in February — I’ll link the essay below. If you haven’t read it yet, just know it was some of my best work.

I’ve been realizing this past week that I have burned myself out creatively and I’m trying to pull myself up out of that. But while realizing that I burned myself out, I had to go down to the root cause of it. My blog is my baby, y’all know that. I haven’t posted the Bayou Journal in a little over a month. The reason being is because I’ve had a hard time trying to juggle my creative energy and time. I have a manuscript that I’ve been working on for a few months and I’ve hit some roadblocks recently on it. Major ones.

And I had to think about why I’ve been hitting those blocks. The reason being is because the manuscript is complete fiction — yes, I pull from a real-life event that happened — but I am in charge of creating the entire world from scratch. Every single character, every scene, every plot turn — all of it. And yes, it is so much fun. I have a freaking blast doing it when I feel inspired… but somewhere along the way, I’ve kind of lost my burning passion for fiction. I know it’ll come back eventually, but I think I’m just growing as a writer. I’m navigating what my heart wants to write about and where it wants to go.

I was over the moon when Times Picayune decided to post my work. I even had a meeting the week before last with a News Director from a public radio station regarding what I do and we talked about where I could possibly fit in for some upcoming articles.

There is so much creative juice that goes into being a fiction author. My process doesn’t look the same all of the time. But in order for me to really focus and hone in on my manuscript, I have to shut the world off — I have to really get in the zone and my mind has to wander and create something from scratch. Do I get inspiration from other places? Sure. But I am very big on originality. I want to write something that’s never been written the way I wrote it. Because of that, I struggle. That struggling has been going on for about two months and within the struggle, I’ve burned myself out completely.

Because I spend so much time looking at my manuscript — watching the cursor blink. Watching the white page stare back at me — and it starts making me really fucking sad. It drains me the way I try to force myself to create even when I know I should take a break. So that drainage leaks into other parts of my writing world — like my blogs, my Bayou Journal, etc. and then I end up not writing anything — not even for my blog. Which isn’t doing anybody any good because hello — writing is what I do!

What I realized is that when I put more of my energy into writing things that I really care about, like the beauty of New Orleans or environmental issues, (even the weather — yes, many of you may not know, but I have an obsession with storms and how they work), I feel light. I feel happy. When I was sending out news reports to my subscribers last year every Thursday night, I was having so much fun. When I think about working for a newspaper as a Columnist, I get butterflies. Because the writing just flows — I’m able to research and I love researching. I’m able to learn new things and expand my mind. It feeds me. My heart is in the real stories, real issues, real people and what’s going on in the world around me. That nourishment is what I need in order to be able to create my fiction worlds and have more fun with it. I find that I get more creative fiction inspiration the more I read, the more I research, and the more I write about real issues that are going on. That’s what I learned over the past two weeks.

I also talked to my mom the other day and told her that a lot of people get stuck on thinking they have to just do one thing. They find a lane and they feel like they have to stay there. Absolutely not. I am a bomb ass fiction writer. And I’m a bomb ass columnist. I don’t have to choose between the two. And I think that’s what I’ve been trying to do and that’s why I’ve been so down. I can be a fiction author and a columnist. I can do both.

I say all that to say that my focus has to switch a tad bit. I need to put more energy into what feeds me, so that I can create other things when I feel inspired to do so. At some point, my book will be done and it will be amazing. Because I didn’t force myself to create from burnout. I created when I was well fed mentally. A while back I told myself that I needed to focus less on my blog and more on my manuscript. And while doing that, I burned myself out even more.

Something a friend of mine told me a few weeks ago — if something isn’t working, try something new. So I’m reworking my creative flow and that’s okay.

I guess I get so down about it because I still haven’t worked all the way through my people pleasing issues. I have made some major progress with it, but it’s still there sometimes. People know me so much for being a fiction author, so I beat myself up about my manuscript — like if I don’t get another book out this year people will forget me. Or they’ll think I’m not good enough.

That is just not true at all! And even if it is, that means they weren’t real supporters anyway.

So there ya have it. I successfully figured out the cause of my burnout, I sat with it, and I made the decision to switch up where I focus most of my writing energy as a priority.

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Small Blog Change Update 💻

So if you are one of my Bayou Journal readers (thank you for the support), there is a change coming. Small, but worth mentioning.

Since I will be starting my MFA classes in two weeks, I have decided to post the Bayou Journal once a month instead of every Friday. This will ensure that I’m not biting off more than I can chew!

But with that change, I will be attaching a PDF style journal for printing and keepsakes if you’d like that! It will be the contents of the blog post just in a fun newspaper style way. The one for April will be dropping later in the month because there is an event happening in New Orleans that I really want to document and add to the journal. So I’ll just say to expect the journals to appear in your inbox every month, at the end of the month. Stay tuned!!

Gulf Coast Resident?! This One’s For You…

That environmental essay really opened the flood gates for me. I was so proud of the research I did for it and it made me realize the kind of writing I have the most fun doing.

What to expect from Notes from the Gulf:

This space is everything weather & environment — past, present, & future regarding the Gulf Coast (but mainly Louisiana based).

We’re going to talk about:
– what’s happening along the Gulf
– the stories behind the storms (past storms and storms to come)
– environmental patterns and issues that don’t get enough attention (like the Environmental Injustice in New Orleans)
– how history, policy, and people all intertwine

I’m coming into this space as someone who is learning, observing, researching and asking questions. I hope you enjoy this ride with me!

Subscribe to my Notes from the Gulf publication so that you can stay informed. <3Notes from the GulfJust me, paying attention to the Gulf coast—the weather, the water, and the environment: past, present, and future.By Soul x SWMarie ✨