The end of the story.

When do you give up?

Is it easy for you to give up or do you soldier on, determined to complete whatever goal you have set for yourself?

Sometimes the idea of giving up on everything is incredibly compelling. Giving up, abandoning your task, releasing all that pent up desire to achieve, to survive. Giving up can be an incredibly powerful urge.

When it comes to writing a story, does your character give up when things get tough or do they persevere to achieve some form of victory? Does the villain meekly surrender as soon as the hero enters the scene or does he fight till the bitter end?

In your writing do you come to a particularly hard passage to write and give up? Do you scrap that part of the book and re-write it in a way that is easier for you to tell?

It is incredibly easy to give up on something that is important to you and take the easier option. In writing and in life, while the easiest way is often the most appealing, it is far from the best.

Writing can be hard. It can be incredibly tough to get through a single page, let alone a full chapter. If you persevere though, you can complete that page, you can finish that chapter, you can get through one more day.

Some days when things are especially bad and I feel at my lowest, I think back to the times when I sit in front of the computer and stare at that empty page, that last sentence and remember how I would stare at the screen and work my way through that difficult passage in my mind. I would start to realise that I can face the difficult periods in my own life in much the same way.

It can be tough and I know that the darkness can descend and try to consume me. The simplest tasks can easily become the mountain that I just can’t climb, but I will find a way. I will make it, and I just hope that I can infuse my writing with much the same. My heroes and villains will never meekly give up. They will fight to the bitter end and through them I will draw some strength to help fight my daily battles.