Another year draws to a close

Why not enjoy the journey and screw the destination?

Like Johnathan Livingston Seagull?

I agree with the others. If you still love writing, do it. Just because. Take a new class, read a new how-to book, find some new blogs, change genres, go to a conference, join a new crit group, whatever might make it feel fresh and spark a new enthusiasm.

But hey, if it ain't fun no more, then don't! You know? Because there's just no guarantee that any amount of hard work will ever make a difference. I've been submitting stuff off and on for--let's see--about 25 years now. And god, when you say it that way, it sure sounds pathetic. But... I'm still having fun. I'm still learning. I can honestly say that each thing I write is a little bit better than the one before it. And I get crazy depressed when I don't write. So, I keep going.

But that isn't for everybody. If it's not making you happy, then it's time to take a break. Go learn something new. Skydiving? Kung fu? Ikebana? Knitting? Phlebotomy? A new passion might be just the thing to recharge your creative juices. Who knows, one of those hobbies might be the thing that guides you back to writing, and gives you a new expertise that lifts your prose to the next level.

For years and years I had the same three New Year's resolutions: publish a novel, lose fifty pounds, learn to play the bagpipes. Since I never did any of them, they were perfectly good resolutions again for the next year. This year, I published a novel. What to do? I still have two perfectly good resolutions, but I need to add a new one.

So, carry on. Keep writing, take a class (they really do help), join a new writing group. Maybe you'll be published, maybe not, but writing is still a perfectly good goal. If it makes you happy, do it. (Or for me, it's more that I enjoy *having written*, the writing part is painful, the result is the reward.)

OMG, blacbird, I hate to see those words you've typed and feel where you are in your life. I'm in the same boat (logistically, not mentally) but it's all in the perspective. Do you love to write? Do you look forward to carving out that time to put words to paper (er, screen)? Do ideas form in your head? Are you listening to conversations, observing people and wondering how that would fit in your book? If you are, then you're a writer and you can't cut it out of your life.

You know, when people say to me, "I can't go to college now; I'm too old," my response is always, "okay, so you can be 35, (45), with a college degree or without a college degree, but you'll still be (that age)" And I always think about the difference between success and failure in anything in life as perseverence. The salesperson who made the big sale kept calling or making presentations, the actor who made it kept going on those auditions. I feel the same way about writing. I'm no spring chicken, but I persevere because I love it and I'm sure you love it too, or you wouldn't keep doing it.

Please don't give up. I don't know what you write, but maybe you need to take a look at short stories instead of the novel, or get some betas to look at your work and offer some advice, or post in SYW. Go to a conference, take a class. Whatever it is, take a fresh look at everything in this new year. You're not alone.

blacbird said:

Yeah. Kind of like Robert Falcon Scott?

Click to expand...

I named a character after him, actually. Gotta admire that kind of courage.

I understand because I've been there. It can get better.

If you don't follow the New Perspectives I post daily in the CHOP thread, here's the one for today. Maybe it will help:

Decisions are being made that have long term implications and it is important that you trust your choices.
Let go of old ideas and situations and open your mind to new experiences.

I'm the last person to go Pollyanna on you, but I'll say this:
2006 and 2007 both ended with me feeling like my writing was a pointless hobby. Like I was building model ships in secret, and then burying them in the back yard when everyone else was asleep.

For some reason--and it ain't my innate optimism, because I don't have any--I kept plugging this year. Lo and behold, I leave 2008 with 6 publishing credits to my name, 2 for rather serious, respectable print publications. Still don't have an agent, still haven't sold a novel, but judging 2008 against the complete and utter washes that were 2006 and 2007, I'm glad I didn't pack it in last year.

ETA: and lest you think 2006 and 2007 were the first years I got serious about writing, I got my MFA in 1995. I'll leave it to your imagination what the years between then and now have been like.

Neither do we, thanks to the flood of how nowhere you are that's been smeared across AW. Just do something you like and move on. Pity party ended, so quit handing out party favors. Seriously. Dwelling on this does what for you exactly?