How do you know when it’s time to quit?

You grow up hearing that quitters never win, winners never quit, you can’t be a quitter, etc.  But sometimes it’s the best thing you can do.  A job, a relationship, even a dream may prove to be the wrong path or even detrimental to your health and well-being.  In that case, how do you leave it behind without damaging your dignity and sense of self?

We’ve all had jobs where our self-respect is challenged every single day.  If you were raised with a good work ethic, it can be painful to admit that your employers or the work situation aren’t conducive to doing your best.  Perhaps there is too much stress, or not enough personnel to handle the tasks assigned.  Maybe the higher-ups don’t care about the workers.  I read recently about a coffee shop in New York where relations with management were so bad that the entire staff quit in a body.  Agreements could not be reached, and there didn’t seem to be any other recourse.  In that case, what else can you do?

Sometimes you meet who you thought was the person you’d been waiting for, but their behavior isn’t what you’d hoped.  Maybe they make promises they can’t keep, or are indifferent or even violent.  Maybe they cheat, or steal from you.  Many people choose to stay in a bad relationship because they are terrified of being alone.  Women especially are prone to taking the blame for their lovers’ bad behavior, but men do it too.  “If only I were a better wife / husband /girlfriend / boyfriend / partner,” they lament.  Is it better to be miserable, or free?  How can you find someone you are truly happy with if you’re chained to someone whose actions make you feel terrible?

Writers are told to keep trying.  No one will publish a book that is sitting in a drawer somewhere.  This is very true.  But there comes a point when you’ve done all you can and you don’t want to do any more.  There’s nothing you can do but stop, or at least stop trying to get published.  It’s an abysmally hard profession to break into.  Hundreds of books are rejected every day, most of them awful, some of them brilliant.

Even more infuriating are the awful books that get published, while your carefully crafted and meticulously edited tome languishes perpetually in Queryland.  Friends and family don’t always understand why you keep trying, and after a while, maybe you don’t either.  Your heart may break, your dreams shatter into dust, and it’s just too much for you.

There’s nothing wrong with writing merely for yourself.  You’re still a writer, but you’ll never be a professional one.  With print-on-demand services, you can at least have a copy for friends or family of your latest volume of poetry or recipes or the next adventure of your peerless heroine.  Maybe no one sees your work but you.

Don’t feel badly if you must quit.  Consider the following:

• I tried my best.  I gave it all I had.  What did I learn from my efforts?

Give yourself a break here.  Maybe your efforts failed from lack of knowledge.  Or maybe it had nothing to do with you.  With the former, identify what you learn to better your next effort.  With the latter, let it go.

• Was there anything I could have done differently to affect the outcome?

Albert Einstein once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  If you truly could not have changed it, then let it go.

• What shall I do now?

Look ahead, into the future.  It may not contain what you’ve left behind, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing.  So your novel or your poetry won’t be published.  Maybe another kind of writing will satisfy you, or another artistic endeavor altogether.  There are myriad ways to quell the creative urge.  You have to find one that fits both you and your life.  But in order to move ahead, you must let the past go.

Quitters do win, if they really need to quit.  Let no one judge you for your decisions; they are your own.

Please share in the comments anything you think might help others in need of advice on letting go.

PS – I’m not quitting!

A pen name, or pseudonym, is an alternate name under which a writer publishes, something like a stage name for an actor or musician.  There are many reasons why a writer might decide to use a pen name.

A writer’s name could be too long, or she doesn’t like it.  My pen name is a shortened version of my real name, which would never fit on the cover of a book.  It barely fits when I sign a receipt.  If I don’t get married in the next few years, I think I’ll just change the damn thing.  Of course, now watch me marry someone named Smitty Wermenyagermanjensen* or something.

Another reason is to maintain relative anonymity, to protect the writer’s own and his family’s privacy.  This one is a bigger concern nowadays, with media everywhere you look.  If you’re not in the bestseller category you won’t be getting tons of exposure—and maybe not even then—but it’s still possible to be recognized.  Loved ones may not be comfortable with this.  If the writer’s work is controversial, a pen name may protect the writer against retaliation for his views.

And it’s possible to publish in several different genres and write each book under a different name to avoid confusion.  A writer who did this could be free to explore other story types rather than getting locked into one category.  How an agent would handle that, I really don’t know.

Some famous pen names are:

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) – American humor writer and novelist.  Coined the term “The Gilded Age.”  His most famous books include Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Roughing It. His pen name is taken from his time working on a steamboat on the Mississippi.  Mark Twain is a term meaning two fathoms, or twelve feet, of water, a safe draw for a steamboat.  It does sound like somebody’s name, doesn’t it?

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) – Victorian era author of Silas Marner, Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss. She wrote under a male pen name because women weren’t thought of as serious writers then.

George Orwell (Eric Blair) –English writer who penned Animal Farm, a political allegory, and 1984, one of the most famous dystopian novels ever written.  The term “Big Brother” from the latter, referring to a watchful government figurehead, has become familiar to everyone, even people who have never read the book.  I’m not sure why he chose George Orwell for his pen name; if anyone knows, please tell us in the comments.

Avi (Edward Irving Wortis) – a contemporary author of children’s and young adult books.  The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle and Nothing but the Truth are two of his books.  The first one is a favorite of mine.  Avi is a childhood nickname his sister gave him.

Richard Bachman (Stephen King) – If you don’t at least know who Stephen King is, you’ve been living under a rock.  For a while, King seemed to have cornered the market on bestsellers.  He wanted to see if people would indeed buy his work if they didn’t know it was him and so he invented Richard Bachman.  An alert reader outed him, however.   According to Bachman’s Wikipedia page, the name is a combination of Donald E. Westlake’s character Richard Stark and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.  Some of Bachman’s works include Blaze, The Long Walk, The Running Man and Thinner.  King’s novel The Dark Half, written under his own name, is about a writer whose pseudonym terrifyingly comes to life.

A pen name is a personal choice.  If you choose to use one, take your time to consider how you wish to be known.  If you have a pen name and a neat story about where it came from, or know of any writers who do, please share in the comments.  You need not give your real name.

*HE WAS NUMBER ONE!!!!

I was reading through some of my very old work recently, the stuff I scribbled in high school comp class and in college, and I was puzzled by it.  The old stuff, silly as it was, had zing and verve.  My current writing had changed a great deal, gotten better, but there was something missing.  What was it?

My subjects tended to be more outlandish than they are now, with stories about vengeful tornadoes, demons, space cowboys–a blatant Star Wars rip-off that never went anywhere–and ghostly, ironic, scary twists, which Roald Dahl did better than I ever could.

My first novel, written in high school, was a crime novel about a rapist.  I not only knew nothing about rape but nothing about adults and although I finished the book, it ended up in the proverbial writer’s trunk.  There is some good material in there, however.  Potential.  Next to it sat a rewrite attempted in college that turned the rapist into a vampire, which tanked a few chapters in.  I didn’t know any more in college than I did in high school, apparently.  An opportunity lost.  I cringed as I thought how I could have beaten Stephanie Meyer to the punch, if the story had been better.

There were articles, firmly tongue-in-cheek, essays about whatever topic I chose that day or my English teacher had assigned.  I didn’t know then that what Mrs. Burns had us do at the beginning of class was called freewriting. In ten minutes, she would collect the pages and then read them aloud anonymously.  Sometimes it was easy to guess who wrote what (like my stories), and other times we were surprised when the author was revealed.

I liked that teacher.  Once, when we were studying Poe, she allowed one of the tough, disinterested boys in the class to bring a stereo and play for us The Alan Parsons Project’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination album.   That is one of my favorite albums now, because my classmate was right; it’s brilliant.   What a fantastic way to engage a reluctant student, and a great example of lateral thinking!  Wherever you are, Mrs. Burns, I love you and I wish you well.

Eventually I wasn’t a child anymore, and I had responsibilities.  Becoming an adult tempered my sense of the absurd, the freedom to allow my mind to roam unfettered.  I still write about adventure, but in a more realistic, grown-up way.  To get that zing back, I need to let my mind unfurl its wings again.

Maybe I can’t write about demons and spacemen any more.  They were the products of a mind that had no boundaries, one that welcomed everything and put it to use in its work.  But I can still imagine them.   I can try.  If it doesn’t work, no problem.  There will be another silly idea, and maybe that one WILL work.

I have to allow the experiments.

As we grow, we should stretch.  I put that aside for a long while and it showed in my writing.  It showed when I couldn’t think of anything to say.  It showed when I stopped being creative and used writing only to complete school assignments and business correspondence.   Creativity curled up in a little ball inside my brain and threatened to leave me forever.

It’s coming back now.  I finally realized that I was stifling my growth by not letting it push my imagination in new directions, by trying to be perfect, trying to be an “adult.”  There’s no need to stop playing.  And as we get older, we begin to realize other people’s opinions of us matter far less than our own.

Never be afraid to push your artistic boundaries.  Let your imagination run free.  Those little fantasies you engage in while standing in line at the post office are the phantasms of your creative mind.  They are ephemeral; don’t let them get away.  You may think you’re too mature to do so, but writers and artists need to hang on to that wondering view of the world with everything they have.  If you’re not a writer or artist but you have them in your midst, nurture them as best you can.  The rewards will be there for all of us.