In Praise of Quitting
By Anna Elliott | January 6, 2015 |
In our culture, being a quitter isn’t generally seen as a good thing. We value determination, drive, commitment, and the willingness to carry a task through all the way to the end. And rightly so. Determination and commitment and all the rest are admirable qualities to have– and they’re essential to us as writers. I’ve always felt that one of the deadly sins of the unpublished writer (ie the sins that will stop her from ever getting published) is to be a serial book-starter. To start writing story after story, only to abandon the work in favor of some bright, shiny new idea when the going gets hard.
I still feel that way. In my experience, every book hits a rough patch, a time when it would be easier to just shove the whole mess into a drawer and switch to something new. But it’s kind of like parenting, in that you’re in it for the long haul. You don’t trade in your kids just because they will not for the love of pete put their dirty socks in the laundry hamper (and my kids aren’t even teenagers yet). You don’t give up on your book because the characters are stubbornly sitting with their arms folded, refusing to participate in the story you have laid out. Or worse, raising their eyebrows at you and sarcastically asking, Really? That’s your idea of a plot?
Determination is what carries you through those patches, and leads you to the miraculous moment when your book finally works, when your fingers can’t fly over the keys fast enough.
Except when it doesn’t.
It’s a hard experience to have, a hard lesson to learn. But there are times when determination isn’t the answer. Or at least, when you need to redirect your determination towards another goal– something other than your WIP. And it’s hard, because I’m not sure there are any hard and fast rules about when it’s the right time to walk away. When the writing isn’t fun anymore? When it’s just too hard? When your characters aren’t cooperating? But as I mentioned above that happens with nearly every book. It’s certainly happened at some point during every one of the books that I’ve finished and ultimately had published. But the experience of having to quit, to change gears and walk away– that’s happened to me twice. The book that landed me both my first agent and my first publishing contract– that book was written only as a result of having decided to walk away from the project I’d been working on for a couple of years. I had truly loved that abandoned story, too– it was one that had come to me in one of those blinding, miraculous flashes of inspiration that are the moments you live for as a writer. I just had to write it.
Except, ultimately, I didn’t. It was hard to give it up, hard to admit that after a couple of years and many many many near-misses and rejections with agents and editors, it Just. Wasn’t. Working. But I put it aside, changed gears– and suddenly all my crooked, twisty paths were straight and the doors opened, and it worked. I’m pretty sure I’d never have landed my agent and a contract if I hadn’t decided to quit on the abandoned story.
The same thing happened to me this past year. I’d spent . . . ugh, I don’t even want to think how long . . . working on the first book of a proposed trilogy. I loved this story. (I still do, actually). Everyone loved this story. My agent, my beta readers. Everyone was enthused. We got some real interest from publishers, some great feedback from editors. I revised and revised and revised. And then . . . I had to walk away.
Why? I’m not even sure what was the determining factor, exactly. Was it a too-many-cooks scenario, where all the editorial feedback I’d gotten had sucked the joy right out of the writing for me? Maybe. Or maybe those editors were responding to a deeper flaw in the book itself, something that no amount of ripping out and pruning and rewriting could ultimately fix. At any rate, the trigger moment was the birth of my 3rd baby, a year ago. I had wee little newborn again (as well as 2 other older kids to homeschool), and suddenly I just couldn’t keep beating my head against the same brick wall. It really was sudden, too. I was doggedly plugging away one day. And then the next, without even really pausing to consider, I closed the old file, opened a new one, and started typing the first pages of an entirely new story, a book unlike anything I’d ever written before.
Now, maybe I’ll go back to the abandoned story someday. At some point, I’ll at least pull it out of the drawer and give it a read-through to see if there’s something there. Maybe there is, maybe there’s not. But that’s the good thing about stories. They’re very forgiving. They’re not going to be mad at you that you walked away and left them to sit idle for a couple of months or even years. Sometimes they actually even reward you for having walked away by suddenly revealing to you just what the fatal flaw was that made them impossible to finish before.
But so far this year, I’ve written 6 books in that new series I started just after our baby was born. 6 books in 12 months, one right after another, barely pausing to catch my breath. I’ve never, ever had a creative output or a creative experience like that before. The books are being released under a different pen name (which is a subject for another post) so I can’t talk much about them here. But suffice it to say that I’m unbelievably grateful and happy to have written them– and I never would have had the chance to write them if I hadn’t decided to just go ahead and be a quitter and walk away from a book that wasn’t working.
This is a good time of year, I always think, for new beginnings. I don’t really make New Year’s Resolutions, but still, there’s something about the new year that makes it feel like a good time to set goals. Maybe your goal is to finally finish the WIP that’s been haunting you for ages. Or maybe– just maybe– you should think about making it your goal to quit. Quit, walk away, take a different road and see where it leads you.
What about you? Have you ever had to quit on a story that just wasn’t working? How did you know when it was time to walk away?
Anna Elliott is an author of historical fiction and fantasy. Her first series, the Twilight of Avalon trilogy, is a retelling of the Trystan and Isolde legend. She wrote her second series, the Pride and Prejudice Chronicles, chiefly to satisfy her own curiosity about what might have happened to Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy, and all the other wonderful cast of characters after the official end of Jane Austen’s classic work. She enjoys stories about strong women, and loves exploring the multitude of ways women can find their unique strengths. Anna lives in the Washington DC area with her husband and three children.
Hi Anna,
Thanks for standing up for quitting because its not really quitting. It’s a change of direction, which led you to new paths. It is hard to know when to just let go and move onto something new or to keep trucking on with a story we love.
Trusting ourselves and the flow the Tao is an intuitive and, at the same time, learnt skill. Each one of us embarks on a journey where we discover when to ‘hang in and be persistent’ and when to let it all dissolve and know the unknown will bring us new stories.
Exactly– sometimes you have to let go and let the current carry you instead of trying to force it by swimming upstream.
Anna–
You are taking on an issue that’s both hard and complex–thank you for doing it. No one who takes herself seriously as a writer wants to throw in the towel, but there comes a time. Getting some help on when to do it is valuable.
I’m wondering whether you see the question of deciding when enough is enough is more likely to face pantsers than outliners. If a writer is able and willing to prepare an elaborate outline, I would think reaching an impossible impasse is far less likely to happen. But I wouldn’t know, I’m a pantser.
At least once I faced “the wall” you’re writing about. Fortunately, an odd gift came my way, a story idea out of nowhere, but so compelling and complete that it quickly took the place of my stalled project. It was as close to a mystical experience as I’ve ever known–pure pantser. In two weeks of complete isolation, I drafted the whole story. After lots of revision, it became Just Bill, my small novel about dogs and owners living on a golf course in Florida. I’m sure part of the satisfaction I take in that story is related to how it saved me from a dead end.
Hi Barry,
Interestingly, I’m usually a die-hard outliner, and the projects I mentioned stalling on were outlined to the nth degree. Maybe that was the trouble? Too much outlining = not enough excitement and surprises for me during the writing? I really don’t know.
Anna, this is the kind of *quitting* that I do. LOL. When I first started writing, I was a new mom and I tried writing a novel. Couldn’t do it. I was much more suited to writing shorts and nonfiction. Years later, I finished that first novel. I wrote another one. But that first novel is still not in any shape to be sent out … it is such a sweeping book, I need to become a better writer first. That second novel is good but I had no takers. I need to make it brilliant. Three new novels have been percolating the past couple of years while I continued to play to my strengths (yup, shorts and NF). It’s not over until I say it is. And like raising children (mine are teenagers now), I’m in it for the long haul …
I am really impressed with the speed with which you write! 6 books in a year with a new baby AND homeschooling? Hats off to you!!!
It sounds like you’ve been striking a really good balance of playing to your strengths as you put it while also challenging yourself to stretch and grow!
Hi, Anna:
First, congratulations on surviving running smack into a wall — twice. Each time, though, you seem not merely have to survived but prevailed, in stunning fashion.
Muchos kudos, muchacha. (Note: spell correct just tried to change “muchacha” to “mutate,” which is ironic on God knows how many levels.)
You address something that runs counter to much of western thought, which as you note tends to identify victory through struggle as the main highway to human happiness. But sometimes the exact opposite is true, something not entirely foreign to the western mind (you’ll find it in the Christian mystics and the atheist Spinoza and the twelve-step program, for three quick examples): acceptance.
Many a path to wisdom was revealed not through continuing to hack through the brambles but finally admitting we’d gone the wrong way. The trick is knowing when to give up — and by trick, I mean mystery. There simply is no perfect rule. Acceptance is a unique interaction between our inner life and the outer world. It measures something singular about ourselves, our temperament, and the situation we face. To end the marriage, to put down that drink, to forgive the person who injured us, to put that book aside: finding that magic line where we stop fighting and instead surrender is a magical, mysterious business.
Which is why it’s so often difficult to get right on the page. Most great stories turn on a key insight the protagonist earns through struggle and failure against seemingly overwhelming odds. This often involves the fabled dark night of the soul, which a great many writers render in excruciating detail, giving us every thought the character suffers during the struggle with themselves and their plight.
In expert hands — Chekhov, for example, in “The Lady with the Dog” — this can be mesmerizing.
But often what’s needed instead is simply proper staging of the conflict, building to the catastrophic failure in such a way we feel the character’s helplessness, we see the crossroads before us just as she does. And then she does the surprising thing. The thing she’s been trying not to do all along. Without a word of explanation, the reader feels and sees that crucial turn, motivated by acceptance, rendered not through description but action. And life changes. The story proceeds to its (now seemingly inevitable) conclusion.
You’ve lived that experience. And it’s exactly what virtually every hero and heroine must endure to succeed. And yet I’ll bet it still feels a bit like smoke in your fingers — how does one know? Why does one stop, or go on?
Lovely post, and again — congratulations on the creative burst. Best of luck with the new adventure.
David, you bring up so many excellent points and so much wisdom in this comment that I can’t even respond to them all except by saying, Yeah, what you said. ;-)
“Many a path to wisdom was revealed not through continuing to hack through the brambles but finally admitting we’d gone the wrong way.” We should all print that out to hang right above our desks!
I’m sorry, but all I saw was “6 books in 12 months.” Jaw drops, tongue hangs out. Wish I could “quit” like that. :-)
LOL Me, too, Denise! One book in twelve months would make me pretty happy right now. :)
I’ve never had anything like that kind of creative output before, and back when I started my career as a writer, I would have SWORN that such a thing was impossible.
Six books in twelve months? Amazing Anna! I could never do that and I don’t have any babies. If I tried to do that, the stories would be thin and half-baked: I don’t possess a fast creative speed for one thing. My novels take years to write because I have to live with my characters so intensely and live with them for long periods of time. I’ve had short stories that hit a wall. I don’t quit so much as put the stories on the back burner to simmer because I see myself as not ready to go on. So I turn to another story or different creative activity. I think creative flow has it’s own rhythms and timing. I’m learning how to trust it.
Paula, never say never, because before this year, I would have said exactly the same thing: I could never do that. You may surprise yourself one of these days!
Anna, may I ask one more thing? Can you give us a peek into what your writing schedule/process was like writing 6 books in 12 months? I’m so curious as to how you physically and mentally did this. I’m reading this great book The Secret Miracle by Daniel Alarcon about novelists and how they write: of the 35 well-known authors, they all claim their “finished drafts” take at least 1 year and more to complete. So, you really are Amazing Anna by comparison. Can you share with us how long each book is? How many hours a day you wrote? Was there research involved and didn’t it slow you down? Did you edit/polish as you wrote? Thank you!
Hi Paula,
This is a blog post in itself and maybe I’ll write it later on and post it on my own blog– I’ll let you know. But just to answer quickly: There’s also a book called Writing in Overdrive with dozens and dozens of stories of great books that were written in a matter of weeks or even days. Basically what I’m saying is, every author has their sweet spot, their perfect pace, and it can vary from book to book. If fast doesn’t work for you or for your WIP, that’s totally okay. I’ve written books that I could NOT have written as fast as my current series has flowed, it just happened that the sweet spot for these novels is a pace of 2,000 words a day. That’s really the key to my output– there’s no secret, really, it’s just writing those 2,000 words consistently every day without fail.
To go into more specifics, each of my books is between 75,000 and 80,000 words. I definitely do research– I LOVE research, I’m a huge geek like that– but over the course of all the other books I’ve written (historical fiction = hugely research intensive) I’ve more or less learned to research and write simultaneously without letting it slow down the writing.
How many hours a day do I work and what is my workday like? Okay, first of all and before I answer, if you had told my pre-children self what my post-children workday would look like, my hair would have stood on end and I would have sworn up and down that there was no way I could possibly write a grocery list that way, never mind a novel. But, the great thing about the human brain is that it adjusts, it really does. Not that making that adjustment is an easy or a necessarily pleasant process, but that’s how we grow, right? :-) I’ve had rough days of feeling like I’m drowning in my life, but then my head makes the switch and I’m fine and I can breathe again (usually!). The kids are doing great, the baby is growing, the writing is getting done . . . I’m incredibly lucky, I really am.
So: I have no idea exactly how many hours I work. Basically I work as many hours a day as my baby boy wants to nurse. Yep, this is the part that would have made my hair stand on end before children: 99.99% of the time, the only writing time I get is while the baby is nursing. I grab 15 minutes here and there, write a few hundred words . . . sometimes the baby falls asleep and I can write for longer with him sprawled out across my lap.
I’m not superwoman, I promise, not even close. It’s really just that I’m utterly in love with the writing, and at this point in my career, I’m able to relax to a certain degree, knowing that if I truly need to tell a story, it will get told.
Hope that answers your questions. Feel free to ask more if there’s anything else!
Anna
I so appreciate your taking the time. I’m still in awe, Anna. All the best to you and your family and your books. I will get that book you mentioned. Thank you.
Anna, I’m amazed at your creativity and your honesty. This article is a keeper for me. Three kids and six books. Do you sleep?
I totally do sleep. By the end of my days, I need it. :-) I know it sounds like a lot, but I’m sure my schedule is no busier than many other authors who work a day job. Love the writing enough, and it somehow gets done– there’s always time if you look hard enough.
Anna,
Heres hoping that this will be me this year. I gave up a WIP for women that I’ve worked on for 3 yrs. Then the complete premise for a kid’s book fell into my head two weeks ago. In the spurts I’ve worked on it this holiday (with the twins and a tot at home) its further along than the other. What? So even though I never, ever considered writing children’s books, I’m just going to go with it. It feels so right. For me, I’m thinking I was just in the wrong genre. Thanks so much for sharing!
Celeste, that’s fantastic! Keep riding that wave, and I’ll look forward to hearing about your book when you have it done! I agree– sometimes a change of genre is exactly what we need.
Hi Anna,
I have a few files of manuscripts started. I breeze through them occasionally looking for a spark. They’re always waiting.
Exactly– those books in the drawer are always there, you can always come back to them. Or sometimes there’s a spark waiting inside that you can use in a new manuscript.
Thanks for this very helpful article. I especially liked what you said about writing projects being very forgiving and we can always go back and pick them up again when the timing is right. I am starting a new feature on my blog on Friday’s as part of my Friday’s Odds and Ends. The new feature is Writing Wisdom, and with your permission I would like to quote from your article, just that paragraph about forgiveness. I will include a link to the full article and encourage readers to come over to read it.
Of course, quote away! Glad you found anything I said helpful. :-)
Hi Anna,
This is such an important post. You’re right when you say that our culture values determination, and commitment, and downright grit. But I think that one of the best measures of success is knowing when to quit.
There are some things in life that can’t be solved through “pushing through”. Sometimes giving in is the best thing to do. Is there a point to banging your head against the wall if all you’re going to get is a bloody forehead?
Thanks for your insights :)
Exactly, and that’s very well put, Anabelle! Sometimes you really are just giving yourself a bloody forehead. the wise (and less painful) thing to do is turn around and walk away.
I have had to walk away from an unfinished manuscript. In fact, my WIP has required a rest.
Why?
Well, a few days before Christmas my muse wanted to play not work. The words weren’t flowing and the writing seemed forced. Yuck.
Thankfully, now that everything has returned to normal, my muse has decided to return to work.
So glad your muse is cooperating once again, Leanne. :)
I just quit one of my story ideas this past year. Five years, five overhauls and the story’s middle and conclusion has still eluded me. The story is ready. Padawan is not.
Much to learn there is.
Unfortunately, my characters are looking at me and saying,’ why aren’t you writing my dialogue?’ I’m trying to write my second novel and the energy just isn’t there. It’s the only story rattling up there. My resolution this year, and I never do those things, is to just write. This is one of those situations where I can’t quit.
Sure I’ve quit novels and stories. They haunt me, though – rising up all misty-like and otherwordly – taunting and teasing and kicking me in the rear until I’m sore and pissed off.
Lately, I’ve done the Quitters’ Game to the max – I’m not writing at all and haven’t for seven months but I’ve been lying and saying “sure, yeah, haha, working on the next book, haha” — *GASP!* Oh no she Di’nt just write that! Yeah – not hardly rarely a word. And it ain’t that I am “resting on the laurels” (teehee) of my other published novels – it’s that I’m tired and dried up and stressed and wondering “okay, what next?” Yet, there’s that punch in the gut that is me missing the writing – the characters – and I’m a swirly headed mess.
We’re all just human after all – I think writers sometimes make the mistake of thinking we are somehow special – some kind of species that sprouts Have Tos and Musts and If We Are Really Writers, We Do This and That and the Other – nah. We’re just human animals doing the best we can.
Kat, I was just thinking about PM’ing you on FB this morning. Your response above says a lot. Hang in there, friend. I’m right there with you. What’s next? Wish I knew.
I love this post. Yes, I’ve quit on novels. But I’ve learned a lot through the process of writing them. And as long as you’re learning, you’re not really giving up.
My second finished — and I use that word loosely — manuscript was so flawed, if you used it to start a fire, you’d probably burn down the whole world.
My third finished manuscript I had to give up on because I just didn’t have the skill required to turn it from good to great. But it’s sitting there, waiting for me to come back to it. And the good thing about words is they don’t have an expiry date.
My fourth manuscript is almost finished (after more revision than I thought I was capable of doing), and is “the one”. I think. Unless it isn’t.
But the one thing about quitting on a project is that it’s just quitting on a project. It’s not quitting on a career, or a love, or yourself.
Six books in a year? Oh my, I need my smelling salts!
Thank you so much for this post and for sharing your experiences with quitting. It was a confirmation on a decision I’ve been trying to make over the last couple months. Today, I finally decided to let go of one of my manuscripts. There’s so much I love about it, but it’s just not working. I’ve been telling myself that I need to just finish it. I tend to have a problem finishing things sometimes, and I was afraid this was one of those things. But I now know it’s time to stop pulling brambles (thanks David). My time will be better spent in applying the knowledge I’ve gained through the many rewrites of this one and start from a more solid footing with a new story. Yes, I am breathing easier now.