Ever just want to quit?

Everybody else has said the needed encouraging words, I think, so I'll just say, gosh, you've got some damn fine figures of speech in this post. "My pirogue could not sink for there be more bodies than water." If I were the stealing sort, I'd swipe that. I won't, since any literary dish I'll serve up won't have that Cajun-pirate flavor, but still.

Your last line reminds me of something the French composer Hector Berlioz once said about his own art: "I can only paint the moon looking at her reflection at the bottom of a well." It was a damn fine reflection in spite of all that.

 

I am having a miserable day. Okay, more than a day. I've been really sad about some bad things that just keep coming one after another. I talked to someone for a while until my insurance became a problem. I can't say it was helping any, really. But that's not the point. I just really don't feel like writing. I've written so much already. I did an MFA program all so I could write on this level I worked so hard to get to. But none of that matters. You can be good but not good enough. Oh, the impressive personal rejections that come my way. A story with "nice moments." Another said I "clearly have the writing chops we look for." By the time that editor sees another story from me he will have forgotten all about me. But it's not just about publishing, though, a lot of it is. I think I'm just like why am I doing this? My very best work is only almost good enough. I'm poor and lonely.

I did manage to write a new story that I just submitted a few places. It's not that my efforts are lacking. I try really hard when I write, and I try really hard when it comes to the submission process. And I read. I read so much and I think my stuff is that good. Sure, some of the published works are better. But I don't think the work I'm submitting is off base. I just wanted in the world of literary publishing. But when is enough enough? Ever just want to quit?

 

Quit writing? Never. It's a thing I do. My husband says it when people ask him what Wrey does: "He's a court interpreter. Oh, and he writes." But, I also don't pressure myself with any must accomplish goals as regards writing, so maybe my take is not fair to apply. I have a career already that I very much enjoy. Writing is just for me.

 

I feel the same way as @Wreybies . Writing is just what I do. It's my niche. I don't know if I'll ever amount to anything in the business, but I'll never stop writing and coming up with stories that I enjoy. Thankfully, I have other things that I'm passionate about, so it's not a problem career wise. I can still find work and be happy. I don't know you or your situation, so I don't want to make the mistake of giving you advice that won't help you or might make things worse, but if writing is something you're truly passionate about, you won't quit. You might stop writing for the sake of trying to get published, you might even take a long break, but you won't quit. Most writers have gone through the phase you're going through right now at least once. I did too. So again, I don't have any advice, just know that you're not alone.

 

Sure, I mean, I've had moments where I've wondered if I'd ever write again. Or wanted to. But like a drug, I just kept doing it, because like Wrey and U.G. said, I can't not write. You know? I've had moments of crippling self-doubt and the dark part of my subconscious says everything I write is rubbish and worth no one's time, but I keep limping along at my keyboard because it's what I do. I can't stop the flow of words and ideas and they always, always find their way out.

So I don't think I could ever quite writing completely. Like the others, I have a career which keeps me stable, financially, and allows me to write without the pressure that if I fail, I'll lose everything. I would like to be published and enjoy enough success to comfortably live off my books, but what I do now is fulfilling enough that I'm not pinning all my hopes and dreams on it.

 

What do the majority of your Beta readers think? Do they like your story or do they come off like the publishers? You might not ever be able to traditionally publish. This does not mean you are not a good writer. Get 20 beta readers. If 90% of them like it, maybe look into self publishing.

 

Quit, no. Take a break? Sure, all the time. I'm currently very slowly coming off a break. But if I'm not writing fiction, I'm creating something else--in the time I've been away from prose I've done a lot of music writing. Sometimes I'll try drawing again (knowing full well I'll never be very good at it, ha). Very, very occasionally, I'll bust out my old copy of RPG Maker and see what I can come up with. But I'm always working on some sort of creative project--sometimes writing, sometimes not.

All that said, I'm an IT guy with a tech job, so I definitely don't feel the pressure to write--or even create--to support myself. That helps a lot.

 

I think there are two different ways to look at writing - as an activity, and as a career. You're trying to make it a career, and I can absolutely see why that would be overwhelming. But that doesn't necessarily mean you have to quit writing altogether in order to make a change.

Maybe you could get some career counselling (or even just take some internet quizzes!) and come up with another career option to pursue, and then look at writing as just an activity? Much less pressure that way.

 

Yes. All the time.

I wanted to be a novelist. Then I slipped into short stories, and then I got into screenwriting. And I've just moved to Los Angeles to make it big, and after spending every instance of free time I had for the past five years on writing, I get out here, and the business is so brutal, I hate it. I'm stressed. I'm nearly broke. And no one will hire me. Makes me hate it all.

So, I can empathize with you 100%. The worst part? People keep reinforcing how good I am. Makes it feel like that was what I was born to do. But more and more I'm realizing that I can let go of my lofty ambitions of making it. Maybe I've grown, and now there are other things I'd be happier doing. Maybe what I crave is success, not simply artistic expression. Anyway, I know what it feels like. I have serious panic attacks weekly. PM me if you want to talk through the struggles.

 

Believe it or not Rum... I was about to write your exact response! I want to quit, like all the time, but I never actually do. Whether I have the discipline to actually get anywhere is another story but I don't think I'll ever fully stop writing and forget about it. I consume movies, tv shows, and video games (the story based ones that is) too much and it constantly motivates me to write when I'm dormant.

I moved to LA to try to "make it big" too, only for me it wasn't movies, it was TV. I specced the crap out of tons of drama shows, some I've even personally hated but thought I could do a good job writing. Thing is, I turned out to be much better at being a script reader/coverage writer than an actual writer. I'd always turn heads with my script coverages but whenever I showed my TV scripts, I'd get a "eh yeah pretty good" at best. And, of course, being a script reader isn't really a real job anymore in the industry unless you have connections to somehow land a literary agency reader position, which is super low pay and long hours and no real advancement. I left LA pretty dejected and thought I'd never write again.

But now I have a different career and... well... I'm writing again. Maybe I'll one day have a go at TV again but right now I'm happy (and motivated) writing! So for me, writing is just a habit that I can't kick. There might be weeks where I'll go without writing something, but I never stop thinking of writing and I never stop watching movies, tv, and play video games, so I'm never truly dormant as a writer imo. I don't think I've ever lost my lofty ambitions personally. I still dream of running my own drama show one day. But I've learned to appreciate storytelling regardless of the production and audience scale. To me, that's growing up a little and alleviated a lot of stress I was putting on myself... especially being either jobless interning unpaid or interning with insanely low pay and getting tossed tons of the worst scripts you've ever seen to read and cover while trying to write "The next Breaking Bad or Mad Men" in whatever spare time I could find at 1 in the morning.

I wish you well!

 

Please don't quit. From the little bit I've seen, you write to an extremely high standard, and your content is worthy and unique as well. Have you got any contacts you could exploit? Either from your MFA programme, or from elsewhere? Have you attended any writer's conferences, where you can come face to face with literary publishers? Do you go to book festivals to meet authors you admire, and maybe ask questions of them? Not to ask for help, but just general questions about the publishing process as they experience it?

Whatever you do, keep writing. Getting published is difficult, but people do manage it. However, as @BayView suggested, best not to focus on it as a career until you become very well established AS a writer. Even published writers rarely earn enough money to actually quit the day job.

 

No, never. Circumstances sometimes throw up roadblocks to writing as much as I'd like to, and getting published is every bit as difficult as people say it is, but the idea of just not writing has never even occurred to me. I am who I am.

 

Thanks to everyone who posted. I'm in a pretty difficult spot right now with life. Starting this year, I tried to make a real commitment to publishing literary fiction. I've been trying harder than I've ever tried before. I just wasn't expecting so many things that have nothing to do with writing to go wrong. And sometimes those things can change a person. Can a person change back? I don't know. It's just hard to spend all this time on something that's so hard to accomplish. I just want life to get better. I would trade in writing for a better life in a second right now. Unfortunately, writing or not writing isn't going to make much of a difference. I'm just trying not to crumble. I know some people turn to writing when life gets messy. I wanted to be one of those people. But the truth is it's very hard to care about writing and publishing right now. And I feel like what's the point, really? I'm very stuck in a bad situation that is out of my control. I feel like everything is unfair. I just don't have much of a drive to do anything. I know none of you are going to be able to change my situation, but I appreciate you all taking the time to read my venting and weigh in. Thanks.

 

I've thought about quitting in multiple ways. And then, at the worst times, someone tells me that they don't like my work. And I just don't find the strength to hear it. But then I remember that creativity is subjective. I think about all the books that I love that my friends hate, and vice versa too. Getting rejected, especially after working really hard, is such an awful feeling. And I just think 'Am I fooling myself?', but then I try to remember that the negative feedback is only one, or a few people's, opinion. If the whole wide world could read my work then I am sure at least some people would find it worthwhile, and my stories might even bring them something.

Unfortunately, a few people can have a lot of power in this business, but I want you to remember that publishers aren't actually the readers (and how many widely successful books were not published initially? A lot!), and I hope that you will always remember that there will always be someone who wants to read your work. I want to after reading your thread post!

 

I'm really sorry to hear you're going through shit right now. You have my best wishes for whatever it takes to turn things around. Maybe writing can be an outlet for you, rather than a goal? At least for the time being. It's something you have total control over. Write whatever you damn well please. Whatever suits you and makes you feel better. It can be a retreat, rather than just another problem. Write what you would like to read, and keep doing it. You'll build up a body of work, and when things ease off ...and the wheel does keep turning ...you'll have more material to show the world.

 

I'm really sorry to hear this. I can only share my experience with you in the hope that you will see that what looks hopeless isn't necessarily hopeless.

I wasn't suddenly overtaken by disaster. I had made a rational (at the time) decision to temporarily back-burner my writing while my wife and I set up our life. I had also just decided to drop out of my doctoral program in favor of a business career so that we could have children. We had just bought a house. Several years of working a job I didn't like and going to school at night. Then our daughter was born, followed by our son. A couple more years, and then we discovered that our daughter had autism, followed shortly by the discovery that our son was intellectually disabled. At this point, I'd only recently started by business career, and 12-hour days were the norm. Then I moved to a different position, with work days not so long except at certain times of the year. I begin writing what will eventually become my first attempt at a novel. But then we get a mayor and a governor hell-bent on gutting the special education programs my children need. So fiction writing gave way to advocacy and organizing. We won. And then a new concern arose - what happens when the kids are no longer in school? What happens when we are too old to care for them? After we're gone?

Our lives now turned to finding an agency that would be able to provide for them. We found one that was family-based: 2/3 of its board were required to be related to people with a developmental disability. I got elected to its board. At the same time, I moved into a management position with a new company. Long hours on the job, long hours off it working with the agency. And then my son's soccer team needed a coach. Writing became something I did late at night, whenever I could steal some time for it.

I eventually finished that first novel. It was awful, but it was a learning experience. I've since written others. I am now retired, have written a novel that I am trying to get published and am working on another. My time is still dominated by the agency, of which there is a strong chance I will become president in a couple of years. So, my time for writing, while much greater than ever before, is still constricted. The secret is to do with it what you can. For me, in all those turbulent times, writing was my lifeboat, the thing that kept me sane, the thing my heart and mind held on to while everything else was seemingly going to hell.

I hope yours will, too.

 

I think you SHOULD quit—at least for now. I think you're trying to fill a void in your life with writing, and discovering it isn't working. Maybe you have changed as a person and want something else, but moving on from writing when it's what you've pursued for so long is terrifying. I think you want permission to quit, but everyone else is encouraging you not to step when you've come so far. But if it's making you miserable, don't listen to them. You will ALWAYS be able to pick it back up when you find something that supports you financially and emotionally.

Deciding you want to try something else now doesn't make you a failure. You might think that a person who studied writing but can't even get a single story published isn't really a writer. I know I sometimes feel like that. I mean, what would we think of a person who studied computer science but couldn't sell a computer program to save his life? Not highly. But it isn't the same—I have to remind myself this all the time, but it isn't the same. Instead, think of it from another angle: If you only call yourself a writer, then you're expected to write well. That's the low bar. But imagine you now become a business-man, or a doctor, or a whatever: "Hi, I'm Joe—M.D." and then people some day just happen to hear a report you've written and hear how eloquent it is. They'll think you're the most eloquent doctor in the world.

Your studies will likely support you in absolutely any endeavor you take on. It's just terrifying trying to figure out what that should be. And I don't know that we can help you. But it sounds to me like you want to to break (or need to!), and I'm not going to encourage you to keep going with it when what you need is permission to try something else. John Kennedy Toole made himself miserable trying to hack it, killed himself, and then won the Pulitzer posthumously. Don't let that happen to you. Figure out your life. Writing can wait.

 

Very dangerous.

I mean, it's ok to quit.

But if you really, really want to do something, then you need to persist for years on end sometimes.

I've quit a few things and regret it.

 

Deadrats, your problem may be that you think:
> Editing and revisions take forever. It really sucks that I'm not a first-draft genius.
> I thought I was for a while. Reality sucks. Editing sucks.

I love revising and editing my own work - partly because I love reading my own work, and partly because every improvement or corrected error I make in the work makes me happy. If it isn't the same with you, that may be getting in the way of you having publishable work.

 

Ups, totally misunderstood which post you said this on, sorry.

 

Fixed that. Thanks.

 

Thanks again, guys. I'm still on the fence about all this. It really doesn't seem to make a difference if I'm writing or not. Life just sucks right now.

 

Great point.

It's dawning on me that the root of most of these threads lies in various types of incongruous expectations.

As in, if the expectations are wrong at the outset, then there's no way in hell I can come out the other end satisfied.

It seems most of the hand-wringing threads are all about not living up to some standard the OP has placed on him/her-self.

:/

 

I quit one time, but writing didn't quit me (jeez, that sounded cheesy. I can't quit you! says the guy in Brokeback Mountain).

At this point, I've resigned myself to just write because I just have to. Being published would be great, but at the onset, I just want to tell a story.

And tell a story that can be enjoyed. Enjoyed by me. Enjoyed by someone who can spare the time.