When is enough, enough?
The third Thursday of every month my critique group meets. We’ve been doing this for five years. As we settled in with our coffee and scones, one of our members announced her husband is pressuring her to quit writing. He claims ten years of writing a series was enough. It was time to throw in the towel, because he felt she was wasting her time because she’s not published yet.Enough was enough.When is it time to give up on something you love?I have in the past experimented with self-imposed deadlines to achieve publication. It usually came after a series of several stinging rejections and lost contests. During those periods, I’ve come close to throwing in the towel and walking away. Usually my deadline comes and goes and I’m still writing. I’m still hoping. What holds me back is the call back to the chair and the blank screen. It’s the pure love for story telling.When Virna approached me to join Chasing Heroes, I had recently gone through one of those moments. The rejections flowed into my mail box with the abundance of junk mail. At first I didn’t open the growing stack of SASE. I just let them gather dust, as they reminded me of the big f-word…failure. I allowed myself a short little pity party. Then I accepted Virna’s invitation to be apart of this fun blog. What it did was keep me writing. It kept me wanting to write. I still hadn’t had enough. I wanted more. I needed more. What I did with all the SASE, after Poppy tackled me to the ground as I fired up the shredder, I read them. I let my heart get hurt as my feelings cried out with the pure injustice of it all. I didn’t beat my chest with my fists and curse the heavens like a heroine who has been abandoned by her lover, but close. I got all pitiful…for a second or two. It was all very dramatic. Poppy has the patience of a saint during these periods in my life. He’ll tolerate it for a day, then tell me to cowgirl up, face the music and move ahead. In the end, after gathering up all my rejections, all my contest loses, I reread them like a soul looking for more torture. I pushed past the actual rejection part to study what was said. I started to see through the haze of disappointment to find the commonality in each rejection. The issues glared at me like a big exclamation mark. Stepping outside my story, which meant outside of myself, I studied it with a critical eye. I marched back into my den, settled into my chair, pulled up the screen filled with my words and went to work. My determination gave me another layer of thick skin. Spending 20yrs working in a jail has given me really thick skin and hardened emotions, but this is personal. It hurt. It was time to be a big girl to get past it and learn some valuable lessons. I think I have and am moving ahead with my writing. The rejections and comments actually have made me better at my craft.The publishing world is tough. It’s fickle. What is hot, changes as frequently as the price of gas. One year Vampires are the IT thing. Just as we all settle in to write that great American Vamp trilogy, it changes. No more vamps. Now it’s shape shifters. There is a thunderous run for the computer. Vamps are edited into shape shifters. A little fix here and there, and off it goes to the agent. Now we chew our nails down hoping that by the time she gets around to reading your manuscript, witches aren’t the next big thing.Personally, I’m still holding out for cowboys. I’m watching the market with an open minded cautious eye to see what is getting the deals, and what is being sent away with a tail between the legs. I won’t change what I’m working on for the market. For I’ve decided all my stories are the book of my heart and soul, since they all end with a little piece of me inside. What did my friend decide? She told her husband to go pound salt, because Oprah’s recent book pick was from a author who took ten years to write ONE BOOK! She’s written several in just as many years, and isn’t ready to throw in the towel, just yet.Question of the Day: Do you think a time comes to give up? How many years is that, if ever?
September 26th, 2008
Lee 
in
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September 26th, 2008 at 6:54 am
If you love it, you NEVER give it up. For those who love writing, it’s like breathing. Giving up breathing is not an option.
Keep writing. The publishing world needs good, original stories. At a recent meeting where a publisher was the featured speaker, she confessed to be thoroughly tired of being inundated with book proposals that were copycats of whatever is the hot read of the moment. Her advice was classic - if you write what you love, it will show through and someone will eventually notice that.
September 26th, 2008 at 8:34 am
That is such great advice…And something I believe is true.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:26 am
I agree wholeheartedly with Victoria. The only time to stop writing is when you no longer love doing it. One of my favorite people in the entire world, my elementary school librarian, has been trying to get published for longer than I’ve been alive. I ran into her a few months ago at the grocery store and we had a chat. She’s still not published, but you can tell by the way her eyes light up when she talks about the stories she’s written over the years that she still loves writing. Only a fool could look at that and call it a waste of time or a failure.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Great post, Lee, and so emotionally honest and inspiring. I am hitting these moments more and more now, and I hate them. It is so tempting to quit, especially when I’m trying to juggle so many other things in my life. I hope I will be able to take my example from you and many of my other writing friends. You inspire me to keep writing what I love and to believe in all things possible. I’m so glad you are part of CH as are so many of our readers! Thanks much for all you do, V
September 26th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Well, I recruited someone I know into my writing group. And after he was in it for about a year, everyone else told him, as tactfully as they could manage, that he was an awful writer and had done very little improvement after a year. They said they didn’t know what they could do for him and that he should take a beginning writing class.
I certainly didn’t want to say anything to him, but I couldn’t argue with a bit of it. You hit the Line of Death on the first sentence- he’s a scientist type and wrote darned incomprehensibly. It was agonizing to read.
I think, however, that was the point where he quit. (Certainly quit the group, anyway, he doesn’t talk to me about it any more.) I think that might just be the point, especially since he’d written 100,000 words of it.
September 26th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I will never quit writing and trying to be published. Grandma Moses was 80, right? As long as the hands hold out I will write. Otherwise the voices in my head won’t leave me alone. LOL
September 26th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Everyone is very inspiring.
Jennifer, in my experience technical writers have a really hard time switching over to fiction. Learning to put emotion into the work, is a very hard process for them. Hopefully the individual did walk away with something from the group, even if it didn’t work for him. Critique groups are like clothing, not all types and styles fit everyone.
September 27th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Lee, wow this blog is so true. I say, never give up on something you love. My daughter is in her 30’s, and I wrote my first novel when she was in diapers. My debut book came out last year, but since then my publisher had to close shop for health reasons. As a writer I’m not giving up, no way, no how. Not going to happen.
September 27th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
If your truly love something, I don’t think you ever really give up. It’s a passion that invades your pores, your heart, your soul. Like anything else, there are ups and downs, highs and lows, and we all have seasons where different things take precedence in our lives. I’m so glad Chasing Heroes renewed your writing spirit, Lee. You bring SO much to this blog and have an amazingly beautiful way with words. You’re honest and in touch emotionally and you have already succeeded with your writing. Being published will be sweet icing on the cake.
September 27th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Hmm, first of all the question: Why do I write? Would have to be asked. For me the answer was two fold. The first part was, because I love to write. The second was, I want to publish. So after years of rejections each time my goal of publication seemed to be but wishful thinking I asked myself this question: Karin, have you done everything humanly possible to sell to New York? The answer was always no. So, if your goal is to publish, have you done everything possible to sell? Have you made it a job? Because it is. When we allow everything and everyone to interfere then, well, the result is what it is. I made the decision to write so many hours a day, to attend meetings, to take workshops, to hone my craft. I made my goal part of what I did every single day. And when I wrote what I thought was a sellable project and it was kicked back with form rejections, and I wanted to say eff this crap, I asked myself, Karin, have you written a sellable book? The answer was obvious by the stack of rejection letters staring at me. So, had I done everything possible to sell? Nope, I had to go back and write something better. And so the process began again.
October 5th, 2008 at 1:11 am
Great blog, Lee
Can I just ditto Karin’s reply?
No? LOL. Okay, but I agree with so much of what she said. I have a binder full of rejections, every one of them hurt. And quite a few are useless as far as figuring out how to use it to improve or fix whatever was missing in my submission. Form rejections are like that, huh?
But a few, like a few cotests feedback, gave me pointers. Ideas of what I needed to work on. I still do that, even after I’ve sold. Between each contracted book I read a writing craft book on a particular area I think I need to focus on improving. I take as many workshops and classes as I can -both in person and on line, and find ways to apply what I learn. Its a never ending process.
So for me, it wasn’t a matter of when was enough enough. It was when will I finally get it right and make it happen. The fact that it would happen eventually was always solid in my head, ya know?