When is it time to throw in the proverbial towel? Do you need to lay on the canvas like Apollo Creed?
Don’t quit. Everyone says not to stop, and that persistence is the key to accomplishing your goal. Okay. Well, let me ask a question of that thought, how much time do you give to an enterprise that is met with stoic resistance?
The answer to these questions, my best guess, is not so simple. You quit when it comes to the point that the joy of doing whatever you are attempting is gone. Why persist in pursuing something you stopped deriving pleasure from?
Maybe that’s what separates the successful from the failed. The blind ambition pushing you beyond your limitations. I think a few other factors are in play, especially in writing. Dumb effing luck, that’s a big one. Right idea, right time, right people, right circumstance of being, right mood, and quality of good enough. Also, talent matters. Some have it, and the rest of us are trying to catch up with practice.
How much time do you give something? Persistence of time outweighs the persistence of effort. We are born with a countdown, starts the minute we are conceived. Out countdown clocks tick away the seconds until we expire.
So you want to be a writer? Remember one thing, for the vast majority, it’s going to be painful. As you fight to have your words read, you are going to meet with the biggest bastich you’ll ever know, indifference. It hurts worse than anything to imagine what you poured the seconds ticking down on your personal doomsday clock into will continue to be met with perpetual silence.
Write because you need to, write because the process fulfills you, write because there is joy in it for you. Don’t write for any other reasons, then try to find someone to read, knowing that you get to write some more even if no one responds.
The persistence of time will outlast us all, but your words will remain. The joy you gave to the world will not be lost because it was a joy inside yourself.