The Day You Scream You Never Want to Write Again

Every writer faces the day when quitting seems the right choice

There will be days as a writer when you scream to the walls, terrifying the cat, the spouse and maybe a neighbor, “I have had enough, I never want to write again. Why did I ever think I could do this for a living?”

Even you, the ever patient, hard scribbling writer, will face an hour when you want to quit. Your writing becomes repetitious even to you, and the best of what you are writing still bores you.

Your ideas dry up, and your writing mind is on holiday with no forwarding address. You sit mentally wasted in a soft chair, strong drink in hand, wondering why you ever thought you could be a writer? And you will want to quit that day and get on with your life.

There are only two choices when you slam into this wall. You quit and go to work in the real world, finding something you can make money doing with much less frustration, or you make the hard decision to go on. Every writer faces this day, but it happens for different reasons than you think.

Writing for a career is nothing more than a series of long-term plateaus followed by brief spurts of growth. This has to happen if you want to survive. If you find the courage to keep trying and not give up on the writing life, you must let go of what you think you know, then force yourself to grow to another level in your writing ability. No growth, no survival.

Your present writing skills can carry you for a long period of time, but the plateau ends, and you get better, or you get out, because your writing starts to fade into work that is not inspiring to you, your readers and most importantly your paying clients.

My writing several years ago was flat and routine. I cranked out long, nonfiction industry specific business books, endless blogs, and thousands of social media posts, but I arrived at the point where nothing excited me about the process. Writing became something I did without thinking, a process that was mindless and never engaging to me.

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