Why Quit?

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

~Lanston Hughes

I hear many writers saying they are giving up on writing, and I’m not excluded from this club. Sometimes writing can be so exhausting, unfruitful, and downright grueling. There never seems to be a reward or payoff so it just seems easier to give up and quit.

Quit writing? But why on earth would you do that? My reasons were because people had attacked me and made me feel less of a writer and my health concerns took front-and- center stage while I went off the board and healed.

So off I went! Did I really stop writing? Well that is just silly. Writing is/was a major part of my healing. Just because I backed off from view and didn’t share all my writing, I didn’t quit and know better than to give up. Giving up is not something I would be proud of down the line.

I can see my son, many years down the line saying, “I give up. If Mom can do it, so can I.” Is that what I want my son to walk away with? That it is okay to just give up? No way! I want him to see me as an example of endurance and perseverance. Well, he’s getting a full scope of what it all means to persevere. Through thick and thin, sickness and in health, we must all persevere in what we love the most and never give up or give in.

I tried giving up on writing, but deep within me it ate away at me like a termite gnawing on dry rotted wood. It kept eating and eating until I fell apart, gave in to the pull and I wrote and wrote as I found a healing spot. Unlike dry rotted wood that never mends, I mended and am coming back to the writing world full force.

Am I giving up on my gardening; and all the other things that occupied my time these past five or six months? No not at all. I see now they are all a part of me and right here inside me dwells beauty I never knew I had.

So when you decide to give up writing, you need to do a deep soul search of all the things good in your life, even if the bad outweighs the good, you need to SEE all the good in your life and hold onto that as you’re falling. Hold onto the friends who are there supporting you; encouraging you to keep going on. Embrace the love (even if it is small increments) that is tugging at your heartstrings. You need to sink into your writing, pouring out all the mixed emotions that come with giving up and try to visualize a life with no writing in it; pretty dismal picture, isn’t it?

When you rise from bed the day after you announce to the world you’re quitting, ask yourself this one simple question, “WHY quit?” And slide into your lil bunny slippers, scoot over to the computer and without one ounce of hesitation, get writing! Persistence pays off.

The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner-stone of a solid and honorable success.

~Hamilton Wright Mabie