Quit Writing

“The important thing is this: to be ready at any moment to sacrifice what you are for what you could become.” – Dickens

Hello and welcome to Sitting in Silence, your guide to writing, craft, worry, and joy.

Here’s some brief housekeeping: I’m teaching an introduction to fiction writing class online. I’ve taught this class to rising writers in the past and really enjoy it. Join me on Saturday, April 29 at 3pm EST, if you’re interested in improving your writing.

Also, one of my favorite podcasts, the Ursa Short Fiction Podcast, is back for season two. Authors Dawnie Walton and friend of this newsletter, Deesha Philyaw, are starting their new season with a special 20^th anniversary celebration of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by one my mentors, ZZ Packer. You won’t want to miss this tribute to one of the greatest short story collections of all time.

Finally, here’s a special shout out to some of our new premium subscribers: Sari Botton, Elisa Esperanza, Jules Chung, Ravi Howard, Mary Wong, and Chin-Sun Lee. Thank you for your support. Premium subscribers make this space possible for all readers.

Today’s post is my semi-annual reminder regarding when to move forward versus when to do something else.

All over the world right now writers are struggling to complete their manuscripts. Some of you did NaNoWriMo last year but haven’t been able to revise your work. Some of you have works you started years, or even decades, ago. These drafts are full of characters and incidents that feel as real (possibly realer!) to you as real life. You know their personalities, hang-ups, hopes, dreams, worries, and blind spots. You built a world…but something isn’t right. Either you haven’t finished and published your book because it/you aren’t ready. Or you haven’t published it because you need to quit. The journey to finishing a book is very much about turning yourself into the kind of author who could publish that book. But what if that book not who you were meant to be?

If you need to gain more skills to complete the work, that’s fine. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about if you’re writing the wrong book. Maybe the idea seemed like a good idea when you started. Or maybe so much time has passed that you have evolved into an entirely different person.

Twenty years ago, I thought I would be a sci-fi/fantasy writer (we didn’t necessarily call it speculative fiction back then; at least not in my circles). I grew up reading Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, and George R.R. Martin novels; X-Men, Captain America, and Spider-Man comics, and watching Star Trek: the Next Generation, Tales from the Crypt, and Quantum Leap. It would have been natural for me to write and publish something fanciful. My urban fantasy novel (for the uninitiated, “urban” is always a euphemism for African American) was kind of a cross between a detective story, an MCU movie (this was almost a decade before the MCU), and something Stephen King might have written if he was imitating Chris Claremont. I hit a dead end with that book after it was rejected by several speculative fiction publishers. Turns out the market for African American Fantasy, at that time, wasn’t huge. Or maybe the book wasn’t that great. But it was great to me.

I considered continuing work on that book. Thank God I didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still proud of the work I put into that manuscript over several years. But I felt it was time to move on. So I quit writing it. I took the last copy and stuffed it into a cardboard box and forgot about it. I was ready for new characters, new problems, new interests. Over the next few years, I would help co-found two writing groups. My short stories were rejected hundreds of times, but I published dozens of short stories, essays, and even *checks notes* two poems. Most importantly, putting that first book aside gave me the freedom to eventually publish my first novel and first collection of short stories.

Here’s the thing. It hurts to give up anything we’ve invested our time and efforts in. But that’s what a sacrifice is. It’s impossible to sacrifice that which we don’t care about. To the extent there are a pantheon of gods and goddesses up there (maybe it’s just fate), they only accept sacrifices that mean something to you. This is why the ancients sacrificed their best animals, why us modern people sacrifice years of our too short lives to college education, and why so many stories end with our main characters giving up something of value. Jack gives Rose that door all to herself at the end of Titanic (although there was plenty of room for him!). Romeo and Juliet forfeit their lives for love. There’s some rule of the universe that says we humans are only capable of carrying so many burdens at a time. We must let go of one thing for the other thing to thrive.

I was sad to put aside that old novel. I didn’t write for months afterwards. I considered that I might stop writing forever. I could play my guitar or take up knitting. But eventually I saw green shoots everywhere. New ideas presented themselves in the grocery store line or while walking the halls at the office. I sat down and got back to work. But first, I had to quit writing before I could become an author.