As someone who has come to writing lately—and I’m talking here about writing fiction, especially science fiction novels and short stories—after a career spent doing scientific research and writing scientific papers and other science-related articles, I’ve seen, met, talked to, and listened to a lot of other writers, both established and newbies, young and old; and from all that interaction I’ve developed not a few concepts about writing and the writing life in general. Much of that networking with other writers has come at meetings and conferences for and about writing, as well as regular local meetings here in town. I’ve met hundreds of authors, from well-established to beginners, and everywhere in between. It’s impossible for me to have followed the careers of all those writers I’ve met, especially the beginners, and I find myself wondering what has happened to them. I blogged on this before—see my post Where Do All The Writers Go?—where I wondered what happened to all the unsuccessful writers. Where are they? Did they quit or are they still submitting?
Since I’ve already written about this, I’m not going to repeat myself here, but all those meetings and encounters bring up a point I’ve wondered about for a long time. Not so much “Where are they,” but “Did any of them quit?” I’ve heard it said over and over from practically everyone: “Don’t give up. Don’t quit. Keep writing and sending it out. You’ll succeed eventually.” Besides the well-known aphorism “Show, don’t tell,” that’s one of the most common pieces of advice given out to newbie authors. (It applies to almost any endeavor, but I’m limiting it to writing because that’s what I’m most familiar with.)
But is that advice really true? Will they succeed? Will they always succeed? How does anyone know whether a new author will necessarily succeed just because he/she keeps at it? Is it a hard and fast rule that all writers will succeed* given enough time? Or would it be better if they quit before they get totally burned out because they repeatedly sent things out but never made a sale? To put it more generally, is quitting a viable strategy? Is it always bad?
Like most hard-and-fast rules, I suspect there are exceptions. Quitting may be a viable alternative in some cases. Quitting early in one’s career can save a struggling artist from a substantial amount of frustrating work that doesn’t go anywhere. I don’t think quitting is anything to be ashamed of when the act of walking away leads to much more satisfying work in a different field. Once I had a job doing research under a boss who, for reasons known only to him, hated my guts. He made the working conditions terrible, so I finally quit. There was little or nothing I could have done to appease him, and walking away was the best alternative. And so it might be with writing. Rather than struggling by pounding the computer keys in a frustrating and worthless endeavor, saying “To hell with this,” may lead to better things down the road. Who knows?
But how does someone know when to quit, and when to keep plugging away at what has become a frustrating job? Certainly, the next short story or novel or biography or memoir may hit the big time. Or at least excite the interest of an agent/editor/publisher. It’s hard to know if quitting will be for the best, and I can’t give any hard and fast rule. Each person has to make the decision on their own. (Yes, I used “their” as singular.) But I think no one who quits writing to make a living as, say, an astronaut or a brain surgeon or a baker of donuts need think of him/herself as a failure. Perhaps it was for the best. After all, lots of people like donuts.
*I’m using the word “succeed” very broadly here; the real definition is a personal matter. Each author has to define for him/herself what it would take for them to “succeed.”