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 |  This is a continuation of my blogging here at WdC |
| Quitting I get a few newsletters on writing, and this one from John Matthew Fox struck a chord with me recently. It’s about quitting. Now, this is not about stopping writing, but when to realise that things you are doing are not necessarily working. I’ll go over John’s concepts, add a couple of my own, and hopefully give people some idea about stopping. Now, having said that: when it comes to quitting writing altogether, the simple answer is: don’t. We’re not talking about quitting writing completely, going on to become a golfer with a four handicap or a cage dancer. We’re talking about quitting habits and practices that could be holding you back, but have become so ingrained or have been drilled into you by courses that if you do not do them, you feel you have failed. So… quitting. The modern interpretation is that only losers quit. But, way back when, quitting was seen as a way of avoiding the wasting of time. We have sayings like “flogging a dead horse” which show that our ancestors knew that not everything deserved our time or effort. “Quitting… is one of the best skills you can have as a writer.” (John Matthew Fox) Fox says there are three types of quitting you might need to do as a writer: Project Quitting Method or Approach Quitting Genre Quitting I will add two more: Audience Quitting Expectation Quitting Let’s get to it! 1. Project Quitting So many top writers will tell you they quit books part way through because they were not working, the plan didn’t make sense, something in the world changed, anything. I think you would be hard-pressed to find a professional writer who hasn’t stopped work on something and never gone back to it. This is not a sign that you have failed. Not everything works, that’s all. The problem is, so many writers think because they have invested time and effort into something, they must see it through to the end. And if they don’t, that fail word crops up. The thing about giving up on a project is it can free your mind to work on something else. If you are solely focused on that piece that just is not going anywhere, then your mind has no room for any other ideas. Once that blockage is gone, the mind can once again run free. 2. Method or Approach Quitting John Matthew Fox and I have two different takes on this. Fox sees it as changing where you submit, the audience you want to write for, going from short stories to novels, changing something about the style of writing you engage in. To me, it is about changing the way you approach writing. Are you a plotter? Trying pantsing a story. Do you write in silence all the time? Try going to a café and writing in the noise of a busy place. Do you do five drafts? Try seven… or three. Do you use a certain beta reader? Try a new one. To me, it is quitting the way you have “always done things” because sometimes that change can be as good as a holiday. On a personal note, this is something I did. I went from writing a certain length of work – “this idea is a novel”; “this is going to be a 3500 word short story for XYZ Magazine” – to just writing, and letting the idea length fall where it may. I quit setting myself a definite word count. Yes, this does mean I have a number of stories of a length that is going to be difficult to sell, but the ideas were seen through to completion. Writers – especially beginner writers – who go into an idea telling themselves “this is going to be a five book epic fantasy series” and then fail to even get chapter 1 of book 1 written maybe should quit that length mind-set and just write the idea down. Fox uses the examples of self-publishing v traditional publishing and writing for fame v self-fulfilment. More methods of writing and getting writing out there that you can look at from your own personal point of view as a writer. He points out that this sort of quitting might go against some of the gatekeepers of writing, and he is not wrong. But you are not writing to keep them happy – you are writing to simply write. 3. Genre Quitting Another one I can relate to! Fox indicates that this can prove to be a career boost, and I am not one to disagree. I was selling horror short stories, but my first novel was a comedy about ancient poo. That change helped. However, a writer who likes one genre and just works in that genre risks running out of ideas in that genre’s limitations, or starting to ape others or even self-cannibalise their older works. I know science fiction writer who tried to shoe-horn every idea they had into the sci-fi genre. It was only when his wife (a poet) told him that an idea he was struggling with would make a far better urban fantasy, and worked with him to do that, and then the story sold, did he realise that there are other genres out there he could do. It is not about quitting for good, by the way, but a change in what is being written, maybe even only temporarily. Probably even only temporarily – first loves are hard to let go of. 4. Audience Quitting Who are you writing for? That’s a question I often ask people, and, at the risk of sounding clichéd, the first answer should be, “For yourself.” However, there are external audiences as well. if you are writing to just please these external audiences, are you giving yourself a fair go? Put yourself first. However, many writers do write for an external audience. They might see themselves as a capital-L Literature author, and so write for those people, or a modern poet, so write with those readers in mind, or even the next Stephen King, so write in that style. So this sort of quitting is easy – write for a different audience! This can be related to genre, but can also be a matter of writing in a different style. Young adult instead of adult, more formal instead of pulp fiction, form poetry instead of free-form. Different audiences can free up the mind, and quitting an audience might also mean quitting self-expectations. There is another form of this, though. A person writes and their family and friends seem to like it, but when they make it public, they get negative feedback after negative feedback for their work, and this can put them off. I have seen it so often – it puts people off writing for good. What it should do is make the writer realise that maybe their audience is not public but private. (Unless they want the feedback in order to improve; that’s different. But so many writers just want affirmation.) So, quitting the public audience for a very select private one, or even to just yourself, is a perfectly viable option. 5.Expectation Quitting This is one that a lot of people who believe they have talent and have been told they have talent struggle with. As a writer, nothing is set in stone. I might have been lucky to have well over 100 pieces of work traditionally published, and, I am going to admit, my expectation was to be traditionally published, short story, poetry and novel. I had that expectation and I made it. Not everyone is going to get there. I have a very close friend who has been trying for more than 20 years to become traditionally published. She has tried selling poetry, short stories (and I think her stories are great) and novels, all to no avail. Maybe she needs to quit the expectation to become trad published. I won’t tell her that, but maybe it’s not in the cards for her. On a smaller level, I have another friend who has an expectation of being published in one of the big-4 SciFfi-Fantasy magazines (Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, Analog, F&SF) after having a few shorts published in other trad published magazines/anthologies. I don’t think she will make it, but she has that expectation based on feedback from independent readers. The problem is, if these expectations are not met, then the writer sees themselves as a failure. Quitting these expectations and just focusing on being a writer could be better for mental health. To quote John Matthew Fox again: “I am here to tell you that it’s okay to quit. You’re not going to stop being a writer if you abandon your current project. You are not going to be a failure if you switch tracks. ”Listen to me: it’s okay. Don’t feel guilty. Don’t feel like you’re a failure. Think of it using one of the euphemisms the military would use about retreating: it’s a ‘tactical repositioning.’ ”You’re not running away from writing, you’re just choosing to run in a different direction.” Quitting like this does not make you a failure. The fact you are getting words out of your head into a physical medium puts you ahead of 99.99% of the world’s population. So keep on writing. |
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