Writing is a long, hard road. Sometimes it feels like you’re making huge strides forward. Sometimes you’re standing so still while everyone else around you rushes past, that it feels like you’re walking backwards. And sometimes it’s incredibly tempting to get out of the race entirely.
This is something I’ve been struggling with, and I’m sure most of you have as well, at one point or another. It’s one of those experiences in writing that is simultaneously so universal and so isolating. So I’ve gathered a few quotes from various writers that have helped me from getting (too) despondent about editing.
A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, or because everything she does is golden. A writer is a writer because, even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.
Everyone succeeds and everyone fails. Succeeding is easy. Failing is hard. Get good at the hard thing.
No matter where you are in your journey as a writer, the editing and notes process remains arduous and stressful. It will always test you… Be kind to yourself. As hard as it is, try to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Even award-winning authors have to rewrite. A first draft is never the final product.
Don’t give up.
Doors won’t always open for you, not all the time. In spite of your talents and all you have to offer, you will go through long stretches where they stay closed for you and you alone. When it happens, you won’t know what to do with yourself. You will begin to doubt, get caught up in the idea that it means you’re not enough and who needs it when giving up is an (always) open window you can climb through. Don’t. Have a clear understanding of what you have to offer and once you have accepted the reality it might not make a difference, keep knocking on every door until your hands are bloody anyway because maybe it will.
Don’t quit. It’s very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it’s very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can’t get fired if you don’t write, and most of the time you don’t get rewarded if you do. But don’t quit.
It helps me to know that authors with a lot more under their belt have had the same experiences of struggling with editing and wanting to quit. It helps because it gives me an outside opinion saying that perhaps that voice is wrong, that I really should keep going, that perhaps I am doing a worthwhile thing. I hope these words have helped you as they’ve helped me.
06/03/2015 at 4:48 pm Permalink
So in synch with this post. It doesn’t help that I also judge myself against the writers I want to be as good as! Course, if you keep writing, you can keep progressing! best wishes.
07/03/2015 at 11:19 am Permalink
Thank you for this. Right now, I’m feeling (simultaneously) as though I’ll never complete this novel AND that I totally can and will. If I could quit, I already would have, I think.