Should I quit writing

Sounds like you're going through quite a rough patch. If you browse around here long enough, I think you'll find a great many people share your struggle to at least some extent.

I hope you don't give it up entirely if it's really something you enjoy. Maybe you could give yourself permission to take a break? Or to write just for the sake of pleasure for a while?

Seems like you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself. I've found that anything I decide to be "all in" or "all out" on usually doesn't bode very well for any kind of results.

Good luck ... and welcome to AW, btw

I you love writing, continue...if it's terrible...well so what?

mock, you just hit 50 posts...have you been in SYW, or where/how are you learning thus far?

You don't have to get spelling and grammar right the first time. You can write everything down, then go through with a fine-toothed comb and find the errors. Classes would only help you by forcing you to practice. You can get that time in finding errors in your work, or someone else's. Sometimes it's easier to see other people's mistakes than your own. Have you tried that?

Would a grammar study app suit you better than book learning maybe? That assumes you have a device that runs apps of course so I apologise if it's not relevant. But I do think just reading books on the subject is not a particularly effective way of improving your grammar. A good guide can be useful on the spot when wondering 'should this be a colon or a semi-colon?' But for improving the base level of your grammar some sort of app, online course or workbook would be better. That and reading with attention to the grammar.

As for giving up - only if you don't enjoy it. But if you really aren't enjoying it then don't force yourself to do it.

MockingBird said:

I have severe case of Adhd, which make its hard for me to focus on little details in books. I do not like medicine because it always leave me with a side effect of deep depression.

The reason I'm explaining this is so you can better understand my point.

Should I quit writing? Yea I wrote many novels but none are published. I enjoy writing but I'm horrible at grammar and punctuation. I cannot afford classes to get better and I try reading books but I still end up making the same mistakes. I'm starting to wonder if this is just not for me. Maybe I should just get some manual labor job and stop plaguing people with my awful writings.

I'm not trying to moan here, I just don't know what to do to get better.

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Ask yourself why you write? What is your goal? Or is the writing itself the goal?

I think AW is definitely more geared towards publishing, but there are many people out there who just write because they enjoy it, they find it fun, or use writing as a stress release. Nothing wrong with any of these reasons.

I also suggest you check out the SYW forums, or maybe look for a beta reader. One of the quickest, most effective ways to improve ones own writing skills, is to critique other writers.

But ultimately, no one can tell you whether you should quit writing. You have to do it for your own reasons, and you need to feel those reasons are worth it.

Good luck.

Okay, this may be a bit harsh, but I only mean the best.

Suck it up and stop complaining. Yes, writing gets irritating. Yes, writing can be difficult. Yes, you may have hurtles that require a great deal of editing. And yes, sometimes the personal situations we have hinder our ability to write.

You write because you want to write. You don't need to write for anyone else, but yourself. If you are not enjoying writing anymore, then take a break. Maybe you need to clear your mind and get perspective before you go back at it. Maybe, you will find something you love more in the interim. If your only goal is to write to be published, then you need to keep at it. It takes a lot of work from anyone.

If you are discouraged because you feel your work has grammatical issues that you are having difficulty getting a grasp on have other people read your work. Some people don't learn well from books. Find what works for you. Go over to SYW, maybe having someone point out an error from your own work will help you learn. You don't need to be perfect and not everyone can do it alone.

Write it if you want to, but know it may never be a cakewalk. Push yourself because you love what you are doing.

Have you tried a variety of different medications? If you haven't it might be worth looking into other ones.

If you've written many novels already, I'd say you're doing pretty damn well, poor punctuation or not.

Punctuation can absolutely be learned. If you've written novels, you can learn punctuation. There's bound to be plenty of resources online.

Here, I found one. Big pile of free lessons.
http://englishgrammar101.com/

Cella said:

Sounds like you're going through quite a rough patch. If you browse around here long enough, I think you'll find a great many people share your struggle to at least some extent.

I hope you don't give it up entirely if it's really something you enjoy. Maybe you could give yourself permission to take a break? Or to write just for the sake of pleasure for a while?

Seems like you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself. I've found that anything I decide to be "all in" or "all out" on usually doesn't bode very well for any kind of results.

Good luck ... and welcome to AW, btw

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... nothing to add to this.
Sound advice. Tend to it.

If you enjoy doing it that sounds like reason enough.

Hey everyone needs to vent now and again. Good luck with your writing

I saw the piece that triggered this reaction. It was thoroughly lambasted on the SYW forum by several, including myself.

Here's the thing: what you're going through is what every first timer goes though. Unless you're Stephen King or basically a miracle story, you're going to have one or more extreme weaknesses in your writing.

I'm getting the impression that, while you've done a lot of writing, you haven't done a lot of sharing - by sharing, I mean the two way street thing. You read and you get read. You critique others, have have others critique you. It's, as far as I know, the only way to learn how to write if you aren't God's Gift to the craft from the get-go. It's, by far, the fastest and most efficient way to learn: studying other people's writing. Seeing how they make a sentence. Emulating the sentence structure of professional writers... and seeing what excites you and bores you in other people's work.

Here's where I'd go from here:

First thing to do: decide if you want to be a professional writer or not. If not, well... then to hell with us. Your style is perfect the way it is if you're only writing for yourself.

Second thing: If you decide you do want to be a professional writer, swing on by the Dejection/Rejection Forum. Post this thread. We all go there once in awhile, usually a lot more in the beginning as we are more or less shown how bad we are from the get go. Get some proper sympathy and some better pep talks from folks who have a lot more experience pepping and talking.

Third thing: Read, read, read, critique, critique, critique. Devour every book on writing you can get. Turn the Learn Writing With Uncle Jim's thread inside out. Critique everything you read, from Yahoo News, to other forums posters. ADHD sucks, but I know plenty of people who overcome it with a combination willpower + proper medication. Don't let it tell you what you can and cannot do. People who empower their weaknesses tend to get owned by them. Just the way it works.

Fourth thing: 2-3 years from now, reevaulate. Find out if you're getting better or not. If you are, great! Go back to step 2 and repeat. If you aren't, go back to step 1. Repeat.

Your grammar seems fine in your posts. It's common for writers to think what they are writing is on par with gorilla doots. I usually loathe my writing. But I keep writing because I love to write. And I am not the best judge of whether I'm any good at it or not. You probably aren't either.

Just keep writing.

What MHarvey said. I haven't seen your piece on SYW but I can tell you-- no one starts out a prodigy. Writing is a craft, and a craft is learned.

MockingBird said:

I enjoy writing

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That's the only reason you need to keep writing.

Heya! Ok...a few things. I also saw the post on SYW that started this. Honestly...everything you're struggling with can be worked through in terms of the writing. You *will* improve if you keep at it. Keep writing. Keep posting to SYW. And, most importantly, I think you should try critting some pieces on SYW as well.

I also wanted to tell you that while I don't have ADHD, I do have depression and while it can make things difficult, it isn't a reason to quit.

I too posted some stuff on SYW and I got some fantastic advice. Was it hard to hear? Yes. Will I be a better writer because of it? I like to think so.

If writing is something you enjoy doing, then don't quit. Honestly, I've debated the same thing with myself because of my depression. When the writing isn't going well, I get depressed and I feel like quitting and right there is where you need to push through it and keep going.

Aside from all that...I second everything everyone else suggested.

MockingBird said:

I have severe case of Adhd, which make its hard for me to focus on little details in books. I do not like medicine because it always leave me with a side effect of deep depression.

The reason I'm explaining this is so you can better understand my point.

Should I quit writing? Yea I wrote many novels but none are published. I enjoy writing but I'm horrible at grammar and punctuation. I cannot afford classes to get better and I try reading books but I still end up making the same mistakes. I'm starting to wonder if this is just not for me. Maybe I should just get some manual labor job and stop plaguing people with my awful writings.

I'm not trying to moan here, I just don't know what to do to get better.

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The way I see it, you have two choices:

1) Quit = 0% chance of publication or success. You're out before you even start.

2) Keep writing = Publication isn't a given, but you'll get a better handle on how to write and make it more likely you will get your stuff read. The more you write, the quicker you will learn grammar and punctuation. Writing will become a part of you, and you will be respected, come what may, by any author you run into. It will not happen overnight, but the benefits you get from writing are innumerable.

I think the way forward is clear.

ETA: SYW is definitely a good way to go. Reading other people's works as well as seeing the criticisms on them helps you better your own writing. I recommend having a look. It's helped me immensely.

MockingBird said:

Should I quit writing? Yea I wrote many novels but none are published. I enjoy writing but I'm horrible at grammar and punctuation.

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I enjoy playing basketball, but I will never make the NBA. I'm too old, too slow, and too short. No matter how much I practice I don't get any younger, faster, or taller. But the answer to whether I should continue playing is right in that first sentence: "I enjoy playing basketball"

If you enjoy writing, continue. You may never make the NBA of writing (however you define it) but that should only matter if your writing goal is based on something like finances, ego gratification, or competition rather than enjoyment.

MockingBird, I'm guessing this is more/less of a reaction from your post in the SYW section.

Yeah, yours/mine/everyone's writing is always going to suck. My writing shit, I know it, you don't have to tell me, its shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

But what can you do? Well, you can improve it.
How do you do that? Reading, writing, getting your writing beat to hell and come back swinging.
By swinging, I mean editing. Sure, your fingers walk on clouds when you're writing. But the real meat of writing is in the editing process. To edit, revise, rewrite the garbage you spewed to turn it into gold.
By editing, I mean you look for ways to improve what you have written. The words aren't set in stone, nor cemented in.

You don't just become a better writer. You work at it. Mharvey brought up great points on how to do this.
Writing is a craft that takes a shitload of difficulty to master (note: I never say perfect).


Now, I'd like to see, sometimes in the future, you post up a revision of what you put in the SYW section. And guess what? That'll be beat to hell too. Then fix that, and get that to work better. And return. And return. That's how you improve. Yes it's going to be hard. Yes it's going to hurt. But at the end of the day, you're going to be happier because of it.

MockingBird said:

I've tried reading my work over and over again but I still come up with (What other people say)garbage. I've tried reading up on grammar and what not but when I write, I just write. I can't help it, it just flows out. When I edit, I get into my story because I know where it's going and I just cannot get the right stuff.

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Hmm... I get being so "in the groove" that simple things - grammar rules, tense agreement, etc. - just don't occur to me, especially in the heady rush of the first draft. That's why editing (and sharing) becomes crucial. If you find yourself just getting caught up again, though, maybe you need to change how you're editing. Print it out if you usually edit on-screen, or change up the font so it's not as familiar. Also, have you considered reading it aloud, or looking into text-to-speech options? Maybe hearing your own words will click on a different part of your brain, making it easier to find mistakes that you just aren't noticing in print. Reading backwards can help, too, at least on a sentence-by-sentence level.

Incidentally, I swung by the SYW post... Clearly, you have a story you're passionate about telling, and IMHO you should honor that passion by working as hard as possible to tell it. Nobody there was saying that you'll never be a good writer. You're just at the start of the journey. We've all been there, at some time or another. My stuff's hardly award-worthy, either, and I have some truly cringeworthy early works running around; all I can say is thank goodness 5 1/4 floppy drives and Commodores are both obsolete, so nobody will ever read them. But, bad as they were, I got a kick out of writing them at the time, and I learned something from every word I wrote. I haven't stopped learning yet, either, and it's the joy of writing that keeps me coming back, even when the little voices tell me not to bother.

So, anyway, the bottom line is, it's up to you. If you're asking me if you should quit writing, I'd say no. But I'm not you. Yes, you have a lot to learn, but it can be learned. And, heck, show me a writer who has nothing left to learn, and I'll show you a graveyard... and a ghost struggling to edit their own epitaph.

I think it's time to ask yourself a few questions. Namely: Why are you writing? Is it for enjoyment? If so, you acknowledged that you do in fact enjoy it, so I'm not sure what your dilemma is. Is it to achieve fame? If so, maybe it is time to stop taking writing seriously. Especially in this day and age, there are better and easier ways to get famous then writing a novel/story.

But I do get what you mean. I do wish somebody would tell me, no strings attached whether or not I'm wasting my time devoting myself to this craft. Whether or not I ever have a shot at success with this. But then again, what does that even mean? Everybody has a shot. And anyway, it wouldn't be fair to the person to ask them to be so cruel... And at the end of the day anyway, I don't know that the answer would particularly matter. Writing, for me, has become a compulsion. I've internalized it and it's become part of my daily routine, and I'm not doing it for success, though I certainly do hope for it. I'm writing for writing's sake, I guess.

There's a poem by Charles Bukowski that I think is pretty to the point on this question:

so you want to be a writer?
By Charles Bukowski


if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

If you enjoy writing, then why the hell would you ever stop??? Just continue enjoying writing. Numberless amounts of fantastic books never get published, it doesn't mean you failed to write a great book!

so you want to be a writer?
By Charles Bukowski


if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

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It's a beautiful poem, but in my experience, it's 25% useful, 50% idealism and 25% pure bullshit.

The useful part is the first part. Really, if it isn't bursting out of you, find another profession. There's so much better, more cost efficent ways of making a buck/getting famous. Put a fraction of the work you need to be a successful novelist into learning investment banking... and enjoy your penthouse suite in Manhattan. If you have a choice, don't be a writer. If you don't, welcome to the club. We have T-shirts.

The rest, I think is debatable to various extents.

A Google search for "Free Grammar Classes" yields a lot of useful hits.

I have ADHD, too. It's workable. It really, really is, and without medication.