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| Or not? Image from www.henryharbor.com |
Discouraged by a year’s worth of
manuscript circulation, revisions, and rejections by the A-list of editors
selected by her literary agent, a friend is pondering whether to abandon what
has been up until now her life’s pursuit. She’s already had success with one
book and scores of short-length work, but the strain of trying to break through
with a second title is taking a toll.
There are practical, logistical ways of
addressing her quandary—she could try smaller publishers, work on other
manuscripts, self-publish. But her larger dilemma presents itself to most of us
at one time or another: Do I keep writing or quit?
I’ve been at this a long time—next year
marks the 20th anniversary of the release my first major title, A
Distant Enemy. As is the case with most writing careers, it’s been an
up-and-down journey of successes, discouragement, breakthroughs, and missteps. I
can’t claim easy ways to decide how long any of us should continue to do what
we do, but there are important questions to consider:
Why
are you writing?
For authors such as Marilyn Sewell,
writing is a calling. Others have a single project that needs to come out, and
once it’s released, they don’t feel compelled to continue.
What does success mean to you? To address this
question, I suggest you write
for a few minutes about the fantasies connected with your writing life If
in five years, each and every one of your writer’s dreams were fulfilled, how
would it all look, in terms of income, recognition, your body of work, and how
you spend their time. Then take a few minutes to consider each of those
areas—income, recognition, body of work, and how you’d be spending time—in
terms of what you realistically think you can achieve within five years. Through
this exercise, you can learn a lot about what defines success for you: money,
fame, awards, the work itself, the creative life. You may also find that some of
your ideas about what would make you feel successful are misguided—either
internalized from others or skewed toward factors over which you have no
control. When measured in terms of what actually matters to you, your writing
may be delivering success in ways you’re failing to recognize.
Business or art? Where you place yourself on the
continuum between business and art affects your level of satisfaction with your
work. Some writers love the business angle and insist that to be successful,
all must embrace it. But while it may be impossible to publish and get away
from the business part altogether, who says writers must publish at all? Some
of the happiest writers I know are those who don’t care about sharing their
work beyond a small circle of friends.
Which stories need to be told? If your passion
for a particular project is strong, get it out in the world when you’re certain
it’s ready. But remain open to the possibilities for sharing it—the
process by which readers find it may be different from what you first
envisioned, or the timing may be at odds with what you’d hoped.
How would your life change if you didn’t write? If your days
would fill with other passions that bring you more joy, your decision is easy.
And bear in mind that no matter how long you’ve pursued it, writing isn’t your
identity if you can happily embrace the prospect of a life without it. There’s
no shame in abandoning a pursuit without having achieved every goal you’d hoped
for—that’s simply a fact of life.
Deb Vanasse is
the author of seventeen books with six different presses. For more on the
writing life, see Write
Your Best Book.