Don't give up your dream!

Why Do I Write?

I belong to several on-line writers' groups. A fellow writer shared her despair with the group, saying the combination of hours spent writing, family responsibilities and a nearly non-existent income from her writing had led her to the decision she should quit writing and find a real job. Her decision sounded eerily like the same conclusion I'd reached again and again with my own writing. This is an edited version of my reply to her, originally written in December 2000.

My Friend, Don't Stop Writing by Kathryn North

Don't let anyone else persuade you to quit writing. If ever you quit, let it be because you yourself decide you no longer have anything to say. Most of all, don't let your own inner critic cut you down until you give up. You know the one--that little voice that keeps telling you to get a real job, that your writing can't possibly be any good or you'd be making big bucks by now. That critic isn't you, not the real you who needs to express herself and communicate. That critic is composed of every belittling voice you've ever heard, all tidily, and lethally, rolled into one.

I'm speaking from experience. I've been writing sporadically for twenty years. One book published--just this year! Oh, yes, I wrote and placed some short stories. No money there, and isn't everything in our society measured by the dollars and cents yardstick? I wrote a few articles and a play or two, gratis for church and other worthwhile but non-revenue producing entities. But I didn't pursue my real love. The novel. 

I let all those negative voices sway me: the writing teacher, a gifted, literary writer, who said, "You're a good writer. Why are you wasting your time writing romances?" She said it as if romances were something you scraped off your barn boots. Then there was the writing teacher who publicly humiliated me in class after he found out I was working on a romance. My husband looked at the bills and at my unsold manuscript and suggested, quite rationally, that right now we needed me to get a job that paid something. 

I gave up. Told myself I'd write evenings and weekends. Right! I'd also learn to walk on water.

At the time, in addition to having young children, a husband, and a home to care for, I attended college. I don't know when I thought I was going to do all this, and write, too. I almost killed myself, trying. Finally, I quit writing, but continually it nagged at me. The need, the compulsion, refused to cooperate and fade quietly into the sunset.

I spent as much as two months writing a Christmas letter that the recipients eagerly anticipated. For years, that was all that fed my writing hunger.

The thing that really sucks is that if I'd believed a little more in myself, I would have been published years ago. My very first novel, one so terrible it now resides in the deepest, darkest, corner of my very dusty closet, made it to an editorial reading in England at Mills & Boon. That was in the days there were no USA romance publishers. Mills & Boon rejected it, with a handwritten letter explaining they liked the story and my writing but the hero was "amoral." The industry has changed so much he'd be perfectly acceptable in a "sweet" romance today. I was so ignorant of the industry that I gave up. Right then and there. After shedding bitter tears, I put the manuscript away. Got a job. Went to college, yada yada.

I didn't write again for years. Now I know that I had happened to hit the time the romance industry was ready to explode. Mills & Boon had actually read the manuscript. The editor, overall, had liked it. I should have rewritten the story and resubmitted it to that editor. Then sat right down and written another. 

Instead, I gave up.

Except, my muse wouldn't let me quit. Twenty years later, here I am. If we're meant to write, dear friend, we write. As writers, we have a flair for words and a need to communicate. A gift. A precious gift. Like a precious child, we can love and nurture it, or ignore and abuse it.

You were right to bring your question to our writers' group. Never talk to non-writers about this. Even if they're your closest family members and beloved friends, they have absolutely no clue. Their gifts are different. They will never understand yours. However, they can't make the decision for you. If you quit writing, the decision will ultimately be yours.

If you absolutely have to find a second job (writing is your first job, you know) I can think of no better advice than Rita Mae Brown's. She wrote that the second job should be one that doesn't exhaust the mental resources you need to write. In other words, for a writer, a physically active second job is better than one that's mentally demanding. 

Only you know what you have to do, right now. But, whatever you decide, don't give up writing. You don't want to lock your precious gift in a dark, dusty closet and ignore it, like I did mine.

© 2001 Kathryn Awe. May not be copied or reproduced except with author's permission.