Time to Quit?

[KeithD]

I pushed through two careers to be able to be writing full time and not have to do it to pay the bills. I'm there now. I presume I'll be doing that past the end--at least like many other writers, still having works being published after I'm gone.

 

[litfan10]

I truly believe writers are wired to write. It's what we do. It's what we have to do regardless if we publish or not.

Why stop? Either because we can' t anymore or lose the motivation. Friends, family, and students (I taught writing) have asked me if I am ever going to stop writing. I tell them I'll stop when the voices in my head stop talking to me or when I see something interesting and I don't immediately come up with a hook line and an approach.

I've been professionally writing since the late seventies. I've written and published a lot. I'm very happy with my career.

In the last ten years I've had three brutal health issues, the third of which I am dealing with now. These three unrelated occurrences came with a lot of pain that makes it hard to focus. My writing paused and is paused, but the ideas still spew out of my head. I'll write again.

Recently Dennis DeYoung, founding keyboardist of Styx (he wrote "Come Sail Away), released what he calls his final album. Why final? In an interview he stated, " I' m seventy. I'm old, tired and lazy. This is hard work. I'm done.". His motivation is gone. However, if Styx gets inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it's safe money to bet if he gets a chance he will be right up on that stage rocking out like he's done his entire career. Motivation.

 

[KeithD]

I truly believe writers are wired to write.

But do you think everyone is a "writer"? Does anyone who has keyed words into their computer qualify for this "everyone is wired for it" belief? I think that's the issue here. I don't think simply everyone is wired to have to write or die. I think far fewer folks are "wired for it" than are trying to do it. And I think if they are agonized enough by trying to do it and not getting it done to their satisfaction to be asking the world if they should quit trying to do it, maybe they should. They surely have something else they can do that doesn't require agony and huge self-doubt.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Different folks, different (brush) strokes. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be the same with writers. Personally, I feel the need to go right to the end. And (on EB’s advice ) I have a pen and a notebook ready for the nurse at the hospice.

With your turn of phrase, Sam, your nurse will undoubtedly feature as a leading lady. Nurses, stockings, uniforms, and all on the National Health - what's not to like about that?

 

[ChloeTzang]

Over the last several years, I've posted over 200 stories here. In the main, they seem to have been well-received. Writing my stories is a self-indulgent pleasure. However, I'm starting to think that I've already posted too many and that it may be time to stop simply based on the numbers. Thoughts?

If you still enjoy writing, write. If you don't, don't. Simple. It's not like there's a limit on the number of stories you can have here. And there's writers with more than 200.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I pushed through two careers to be able to be writing full time and not have to do it to pay the bills. I'm there now. I presume I'll be doing that past the end--at least like many other writers, still having works being published after I'm gone.

That's pretty much how I feel after 6 years writing. I enjoy it even more than I did when I started, and I spend all my spare time writing. Love to have my writing pay the bills, and maybe that'll happen one day, but I can't ever see myself stopping now. It's just too much fun, and I get twitchy when I haven't written something for a while.

 

[MillieDynamite]

On my personal writing, at times, I get writers block. Or worse, an over abundance of ideas, coupled with the inability to write fast enough to finish before new idea takes root. Causes a lot of start and not many finishes for sometime.

 

[litfan10]

But do you think everyone is a "writer"? Does anyone who has keyed words into their computer qualify for this "everyone is wired for it" belief? I think that's the issue here. I don't think simply everyone is wired to have to write or die. I think far fewer folks are "wired for it" than are trying to do it. And I think if they are agonized enough by trying to do it and not getting it done to their satisfaction to be asking the world if they should quit trying to do it, maybe they should. They surely have something else they can do that doesn't require agony and huge self-doubt.

Way back (70s) I went to a writers conference at a college where Stephen King was the guest of honor. At a reception for him I watched all these suit and tie administrators and academics approach him with their stories of the stories inside of them or how they "always wanted to be a writer" but hadn't.

Finally after the umpteenth such approach King smacked his forehead and loudly proclaimed "I always wanted to be a rocket scientist.". Wannabes left him alone after that. King was right, they were every bit the writer that he was a rocket scientist, not at all.

I said "writers are wired to write" writers, not everybody. Just as I believe artists are wired to....um err, art and musicians are wired to music. "

I don't feel publishing is part of the definition - it helps, but someone who for years and years writes daily in a journal or has filled notebooks or filing cabinets that is a writer. It's the action, and the need for the action, that defines the writer.

Technically everyone could write but far, far from everyone is a writer.

Why do I think I am a writer? Because the majority of the hours of my life found me banging on my typewriter or computer keyboard rather than any of the myriad other things I could have been doing. I wanted to spend all that time doing what I love. The voices in my head made me do it.

There's an axiom in the teaching profession: those who can, do; while those who can't, teach. There is some truth to that. I met many a teacher of writing who had all the grammar and punctuation rules down solid but there were no voices, no hours at the keyboard, no filled notebooks or filing cabinets. They were not writers; they were fans of writing. There's a big difference.

 

[PBAnnie]

On my personal writing, at times, I get writers block. Or worse, an over abundance of ideas, coupled with the inability to write fast enough to finish before new idea takes root. Causes a lot of start and not many finishes for sometime.

I relate to that as strongly as I relate to anything. It feels like a curse to have 90 percent of a story complete in the mind and be unable to put it in writing before the memory fades and the imagination jumps on the next pretty idea that saunters by.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I relate to that as strongly as I relate to anything. It feels like a curse to have 90 percent of a story complete in the mind and be unable to put it in writing before the memory fades and the imagination jumps on the next pretty idea that saunters by.

Listen to me, I'm telling you this for your own good ___ Butterfly, look, look, a beautifully butterfly. Umm, what was I telling you?

Nothing much, you just thought I was doing good in school, dad!

 

[Auden James]

But what is the good of just being a writer—in the functional sense of the word (someone who writes)? What, e.g., is the good of being a bridge builder whose built bridges tend to collapse after a little while?

In the functional sense even chimps typing away at some keyboard would be "writers," and—if they were to keep at it just long enough—the outcome might even be a legible sentence or phrase here and there, but what would be the good of this waste of paper and time?

Is there really no difference anymore to be made between "writer" and "hack?"