The art of giving up
Where I talk about how quitting my dream of becoming a bestselling author made my life better
Yesterday I read a very interesting post by
about the misguided and toxic positivity of the “never give up and you will achieve” or “you can be anything you set your mind to” mentality.As Freddie states here:
The first problem is that the kind of people who get up in front of crowds and say “I never gave up on my dreams, and I made it!” don’t understand survivorship bias - all the people who never gave up but nevertheless never make it don’t get invited to stand up in front of crowds and make speeches. The second is that, once we have misapprehended the nature of success in that way, the insistence that we should never give up becomes immensely cruel; it keeps people stuck pursuing kinds of success they will never achieve, and it tells them that if they eventually give up, that failure is their own fault.
I found myself nodding along to the entire thing and thinking about how knowing when and what to quit can be just as powerful as chasing after goals with all our might.
Now, I am an inherently positive person. I do like to see the bright side of everything, I appreciate a good, inspiring speech just as much as the next gal, and generally do think that chasing after one’s dreams is a noble and worthy pursuit.
That being said, there is a difference between being optimistic and being oblivious to one’s own, as well as others’ limitations. During the past twenty or so years, I have grappled with what is and is not a worthwhile investment of time and effort on my part, and have been slowly but surely, eliminating the things that take up excessive energy and mental work, without yielding the desired results.
To put it plainly, I am learning when to quit.
Quit poorly written books, bad habits, nutritional choices, philosophies or ideologies not in-line with my internal moral compass, toxic relationships, unrealistic goals.
I am teaching myself to let go of everything that sucked life force and time, and invest my energy on people and activities that give me meaning, joy, and purpose.
I write this, fully aware of my immense privilege in being able to quit certain things and focus on others: Not everyone can leave a soul-sucking job when there’s bills to pay and children to raise. Some aspects of our lives we can control better than others, and that is where I focus on.
Thirteen years ago, I set out to write the best young adult novel ever written: I wanted it to have literary merit but also be a commercial success, I wanted it to deal with themes of love, loss, friendship and growing up, in a fun but also deep and serious way. I wanted to go on the Graham Norton Show and talk about it, but also maintain my privacy while being wildly recognized for my work… (I am NOT joking here). That was the picture of a successful writer I had in my head, nothing else would do.
I tried for years to make this dream come true. I tried in all the ways I knew how: I did NaNoWriMo, I joined an online writing community to get feedback, I took a long-distance creative-writing course, I wrote everyday. I did all these things and worked on my idea and a rough manuscript for over 5 years without pausing.
I read the books promising me success if only I mastered “these 5 core things!” or if I fostered a routine that would magically transform me into Steven King. I exchanged critiques and took part in challenges and submitted other pieces of fiction I’d write along the way, even getting some of them published!
One might say I did my best, tried my hardest to make my dream of becoming the next John Green come true, and yet that never happened. What did happen (amongst other life-changing events such as birthing two humans) was that I burned out. I couldn’t figure out how to stay on top of my ambition.
I knew I was a decent writer, maybe not award-winning (yet!), but I could improve. I networked. Started blogging. Created a Facebook page (back when Facebook was somehow relevant). Got involved in a YA anthology. I wrote and rewrote.
Yet I saw other writers fly past me, get repeatedly published in esteemed journals as I was still trying to gain momentum and finish my draft.
There eventually came a point when writing became a source of anxiety and dread. I feared the blank page as if a chainsaw-yielding maniac would jump out of it should I I dare open my laptop or notebook to tackle its naked audacity. I cried on more than one occasions about failing, not completing my opus magnum, not knowing how to be a great writer and savvy marketer and have a charismatic social media presence to help promote my book when the time came.
I stretched myself to the point of breaking and when I broke I gave up writing completely, feeling like the biggest failure ever to live. Some time around 2016, I resigned and focused on raising my daughter.
Apart from very few poems (three or four in total between 2016 and 2021) I wrote nothing until two years ago. What brought me back to writing ultimately was the visceral need to express my grief over news of my daughter’s diagnosis. During the darkest period of my life, when life seemed to have lost all meaning and I experienced no joy whatsoever, what helped me crawl out of my despair was writing.
I wrote to make sense of my thoughts, my new reality, my love, my grief. Writing became as necessary again to me as breathing, and doing it no longer felt intimidating, because I wasn’t trying to prove anything to myself or anyone else. I was doing it for the joy and meaning it gave me, which ultimately should've been my goal from the beginning.
I don’t believe everyone can do anything they set their mind to. I do believe though, by adjusting and re-adjusting expectations and working on the aspects of life we can control, becoming better and constantly evolving and learning, we can achieve many worthwhile goals, gain meaning and find joy in our time on earth.
For me, this means writing because it makes me happy. Learning because I like to see how my poems or stories change and evolve. Networking because meeting other writers and interacting with them brings me immense joy and enriches my life. Attempting to get traditionally published because I’d like to reach more people with my work, but also posting here on Substack and on my personal blog or Instagram to reach the followers I already have.
It is still unclear whether one day I’ll write a novel. I’d like to try, and I think the moment will come that I will. If and when that happens, I will do my best work and hope it will reach the right people. Whether it becomes a bestseller or not, is irrelevant. I hope it will, but if it doesn’t, the process itself will have been the reward. I truly believe that now. Outside metrics of success have plagued me for so long I no longer want to give them any more power.
I quit the dream of toping the New York Times bestseller list and gained my sanity.
I gained an online writing community that focuses on craft and building connections. I’ve met people I consider friends, even if I’ve never met them. I’ve written more and more joyfully since March 2023, than I ever did before and for the first time in my life, I don’t feel like a failure.
Success now is doing what I love for the love of doing it. And that is more than enough.
I leave you with a poem I wrote about quitting smoking a while back and wish you happy Halloween!
Quitting
I get the painful yearn for a cigarette at the most unexpected times: While waiting to pick my daughter from the bus stop, when marveling at a sunset, in the small hours of the night when everyone is sleeping and silence becomes its own mistress, alive with meaning and purpose.
It takes me by surprise: this tugging desire to feel the grassy texture of tobacco between my fingers, to inhale its earthy smell before turning it into a forest fire. I thought the hardest times to abstain would be the ones I lit one up mechanically: with my morning coffee, after a good meal, with a glass of wine. And yet, there seems to be a different side to this bad habit that's less preprogramed and more meditative, instead of half an hour of yoga, light one up: be your own arson–fire destroys but it also regenerates. And I wish to rise from the ashes, a Phoenix with nothing but itself to return to, a woman left for dead by herself, resurrected by pure stubbornness and the kind of faith reserved for saints right before they die in the name of their god.
E. N. Loizis
Very moved by that poem! This post resonates with me deeply, Elisa. I'm learning when to quit too. One thing that helped me was learning about the sunk-cost fallacy, the idea that you've already invested so much into something that you can't abandon it even though abandoning it would be more beneficial.
So much to love about this piece. I am a chronic and recovering overachiever and have spent much of my life trying to live up to someone else's standards or measure of success. It's an exhausting way to live. The nice thing about getting older is, for me, many of the aspirations I once had have softened into gratitude for smaller, less *showy* accomplishments: I found an ending to a poem I've been tweaking for months; I wrote something that moved a friend; I wrote something that moved "me." Thank you for writing your heart.