ESSAY
3 Reasons Why I Quit Writing
Why I’m Starting Over and What I Hope Will Be Different This Time
I quit writing one day in a little mountain town in Chiapas, Mexico. I was standing just off a crowded sidewalk, wedged between two cars, chain-smoking loose cigarettes I’d just bought from a corner store and trying not to blow smoke in the faces of passersby.
I was having a full-on existential crisis about my writing. So, I called a friend for support. They listened. They encouraged. I listened. I agreed. And I tried to psych myself up to stick with it, hoping the inspiration would come back soon. But as soon as I hung up the phone, I knew. I knew I was done writing.
Here’s why I quit:
I Said Everything I Had to Say
When I started writing seriously, I was around 35. So, I had 35 years’ worth of material. Big challenges, big rises and falls, lots of lessons. And, over time, I felt like the important things had been said, and once they were said, they became profoundly uninteresting to keep talking about.
There’s a kind of curve of diminishing returns, where the X-axis is time and the Y-axis is interest. Solutions to life’s problems are fascinating to discuss shortly after you’ve solved them, but the intrigue drops off precipitously as time goes by.
To keep writing, I either had to write things that were no longer interesting to me or branch out into uncharted territory. The former seemed boring. The latter seemed terrifying.
I Got “Captured”
I write something, people read it. Then, when I sit down to write the next thing, I can’t help but think that people who read the first thing now expect something similar. I know that’s not factually true — no one is paying that much attention to what I write but it does feel that way. When what I want to write something similar to my previous work, that’s a great thing. But what happens when I want to write something entirely different?
The easy answer is, “Write whatever the fuck you want and who cares what people think.” But it’s a rare person who can actually do that. And I’ve accepted that I’m not one of them — not entirely.
I have this weird split personality. There’s the creative side, and then there’s the manager side. The manager side tells me to give the people more of what they want, what they expect, be one kind of person and then advertise that, capitalize on it. The more I wrote about one subject, the stronger that manager personality became. Until, I felt like I was becoming a hack. Or something worse.
I’ve seen it happen to a lot of my favorite creative people, and I know I’m not immune. It was easier to quit than resist.
I Felt Too Exposed
For some reason, I felt like sharing things about myself and my life and how I think with mostly-anonymous strangers on the internet was easier than saying it to people I know in real life.
Almost everything I wrote had me at the center of it. Not the happy, shiny parts I show off when I want people to like me, but the dark, raw, gritty shit. I think I did that mostly with the best of intentions — in the spirit of being authentic and real. And…maybe a little bit because that shit sells.
But here’s a part of me that’s also very real: I don’t want just anyone to know my fuckin’ business. And I think that part is just as valid.
It really wasn’t about some of the, let’s say, not-so-constructive comments, or the few shitty emails, or that one thinly-veiled death threat. It wasn’t about anything other people did or said. It was about how I felt about myself. I felt like I was kinda selling a part of myself out — a part that I should be more protective over.
Why I’m Starting Again
I miss it. I really do. Writing is one of the few activities where my brain just shuts off.
So why am I publishing my work again? I mean, why not just write and keep it to myself? Well, for starters, I have been writing. I never stopped writing; I stopped publishing.
But why do I want to get back into publishing? I don’t know. Part of me feels like nothing’s really done until it’s put into the world. Another part of me thinks that’s a bullshit excuse, and I’m just deluding myself because I still want to “make it” as a writer — whatever that means.
What I’ll Do Differently This Time
I guess my best argument for getting back on the horse is this: I like it. And I think I can do it better this time around. I think I can keep the parts of writing that worked for me and cleave off the ones that didn’t.
I’m going to write less about the past. Instead, I’m going to try to create new experiences that are worth writing about. That means the subject matter might jump around a lot, because I’ll be writing about whatever interests me at that moment. And those interests — not me, the person — are going to be at the center of my writing. I’ll be part of it but not the whole thing.
And, I suppose, I should reserve the right to bail on that plan at any point — without feeling too bad about it.
