The Dangerous Road of Failure for the Writer

There have been million of projects which were never finished or never published in book form. Before they even attempt it, many writers shelve a project as "Too different" or "Terrible" because of their own doubts about the piece. This essay evolved out of questions on that: Why do writers quit? Why do some of them quit entirely on a project?

Perhaps the key question would be what project we quit. Speaking from experience, I have countless stories that I thought were either different or terrible. These failures, or what I defined them to be, put a bad taste in my mouth. The next project will always seem better; it is that old adage of "The grass is always greener." We quit one project to work on another. The problem occurs when the new project brings out the same feeling as the last one. Why continue? This is a dangerous road for the writer of anything.

The work can be a novel, novella, short story, or even a screenplay. What matters is how good we think it is. We cannot succumb to the doubts which tell us to quit, either entirely or just on the project. Why waste all the effort and not continue? We will thank ourselves later if only we can push on.

Before the failure occurs, we can do many things to the project to make it more enjoyable. And writing is about joy. We need to get the word "Failure" out of our vocabulary. All writers have good and bad days. Some drank themselves to death even with immense talent. The doubts will always be there, but we can fight back against them. First, we must discover the project that will work best for us. A low attention span means a short story or article might be better than the novel. When we evolve we can work on the longer projects. And second, we try to see if there is anything that we can take away from the piece. Does it have resonance? Will the story hold the writer and reader's interest? That is crucial. A novel will never fail in our minds if it's entertaining.

Some quit entirely on a project because they got into it for the wrong reasons. The ideas keep coming, but the writer has already given up. We should consider quitting on a project only when our instincts tell us to. But we should always get a second opinion before we burn all the pages of a manuscript. What we think is terrible could be ingenious to someone else.

Writers quit because they expect too much from a project; and they should never completely quit a project unless they follow some of these guidelines. Writing may not always be fun, but it can be enlightening to others and us.