Give Up Writing

It was about three years ago that I sat down with Kristyn Riley Crow​ at one of our regular lunches and told her that I was giving up writing. I'd been doing it for more than ten years professionally and it just wasn't worth it. I'd spent hours and hours unpaid, working on projects I believed in and no one else did. I'd published books that vanished into the void and had publishers treat me like crap (not to mention all the readers who treated me like crap or the booksellers who did the same).

I was done. I was going to do something more meaningful and less painful with my life. I was going to get a "real" job and actually earn money and be treated with respect by people in the business I chose to work in. I was going to stop banging my head against the wall.

Except I had one more little book to write before I gave it all up. One book I was writing just for me. One book that no one cared about and no one would ever read because it was too controversial. I was going to do it while I still had the skills and still had the time. And then, that it was it. I was finished. My career was over.

The last book I wrote was The Bishop's Wife, which has turned out to be more successful than any of the other books I wrote and I do not think it is a coincidence that it was successful because I was giving up writing when I wrote it. I was giving up pressure to write for other people. I was giving up caring about whether I made money off it. I was giving up caring about making a career. I was giving up writing for any other reason than my own pleasure in self-expression.

There is a kind of freedom that comes when you give up writing that is creatively brilliant. I didn't realize how much I needed it. I thought I was writing just fine. I honestly did not see how much I was trying to cater to other people in my writing. I thought I could make compromises with commercial tastes and my art. I'd done it for years and it had worked in the beginning. I couldn't understand why it wasn't working anymore, and that's why I was giving it up.

Telling myself that no one would ever read this book, that it was just for me, that it would never be published because no one would want it--that gave me a safe space to write a book I could never have written otherwise. Telling myself that this wasn't a book that would make money gave me the courage to write something that people would and do hate (read my goodreads reviews if you doubt me).

So my advice today to writers out there is to give up. Do something else with your life. Stop banging your head against the wall. Get a real job. But write just one last book before you do that. One last book just for you. One book that no one else will ever read. One book that isn't for money and that will never be published.

See what happens. You may be surprised at what you write once you give it up.