Shellee Cruz

“Quitters never win, winners never quit.  But those who never win and never quit are idiots.”  David Brent

In our pajamas and over pomegranate martinis, a writing friend of mine confessed that she’s considering throwing in the towel. Or the pen, so to speak. She’s been writing for a few years now, with some recognition here and there, but no real forward momentum toward publication. She is caught in the great maw between novice writer and a publishing contract. More particularly she’s been there long enough to lose her fire, her passion for the journey; she is tired.

To borrow from marketing guru Seth Godin, she has hit “the dip”, and now must decide whether to push through it or quit altogether. This writing journey is hard, and if you’re ultimate goal is only to write, then okay, enjoy yourself, you are in the driver’s seat. But if you would like to get published at some point, so much is beyond your control. One can languish in the vast no man’s land of the unpublished, nearly-published, pre-published, or whatever you want to call it, until you die. Literally. It happened to my late, dear critique partner.

I’ve often thought my life would be much easier if I’d never taken up the pen, never listened to the characters talking in my head. I even tried to quit once when my daughter was very young and I was so, so tired. I went cold turkey – not a word, a punctuation mark, not a glance at a thesaurus – for about a month. I was done. A reader only once again. I expected quiet, peace, sanity.

Instead, it just pissed them off, my characters. The dialogue in my head started every night when the light went out, until I couldn’t take it anymore. I went on a binge. I wrote until the calluses on my fingers rethickened and the voices let me sleep at night, even if my daughter didn’t.

I wonder if my friend gives it up, stops committing the voices to paper, will her characters let her sleep at night? If they do, then more power to her – it was the right choice. But if they don’t, if they drive her to her laptop in the middle of the night like they do me, well, we’ll pitch our tents side by side in no man’s land. We’ll stoke the campfire word by word, story by story till it burns bright enough for someone to see.