And My Watch Has Ended – Why I’m Retiring From Writing Fiction

It was a Saturday afternoon. The weather was unusually cool for the city where I stay. I had just finished an academic marathon of three assignments.

I have no idea, absolutely none, where the idea came from as I lay on my bed at the end of the day. ‘Maybe I should give up writing.’ That’s a lie. I know how exactly I got to this point.

 

To give you a bit of background on my writing history.

I started messing around with story ideas five or six years ago while I was still in high school. In 2016, I wrote a novel I was actually satisfied with. Even my betas, one of whom not then nor now ever sugarcoats his words liked it.

A couple of revisions and a freelance editor later, I started the dreaded querying process. For those who don’t know, it’s a process whereby you send literary agents samples of your work. If they like it, you become their client. It remains the smoothest and most rewarding route for publication.

Filled with the determination only a member of Twitter’s #WritingCommunity can have, I persevered in the face of rejections. When I got to a hundred rejections, I moved in on small presses, eventually finding a home for my first novel, Until We Are Free.

And that determination stayed with me. I never lost hope, not when most of my requests to reviewers went unanswered, not when I spend money on a campaign that yielded no results, not even when after a year, my novel did not sell a single copy.

 

Armed with the full knowledge ‘debuts  are not always a success’, I started working on other projects. I wrote a couple of projects I never finished. At last, I managed to produce a manuscript I titled The Exile.

Feedback from beta readers was positive. All agents rejected it, nothing new there. Most small presses rejected it, nothing new there either.

Brushing it aside, I started in on the third novel, A Time For Treason. This is when doubts started creeping in. Nevertheless, I managed to finish a draft and did the first rounds of edits.

Again, beta feedback was positive. I started working on the final round of edits a couple of weeks ago. This is when my doubts refused to be silenced.

 

My issue was not that my first book tanked and the second was not even picked up by a publisher. Rather, it was a couple of things.

My first issue was the lack of improvement. I don’t mind trying something over and over even if I’m failing. Trust me, I’m a self taught software developer. That stuff teaches you to be humble and patient.

What bothered me was the fact I wasn’t improving. When I looked at a manuscript I wrote in 2017, I couldn’t see the difference between that and my latest work. Most of the time, I knew what exactly I was suppose to do. But knowing to give a character agency and actually doing it are two different things. Thus, writing became a useless exercise in which the outcome remained the same. We all know what they say about doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Second was the fact I’m an introvert, both online and offline. Many people, including industry professionals will tell you your social media presence doesn’t matter. That, is a dishonest statement that doesn’t consider modern realities.

Am I willing to maintain an active social media presence? Sure. Am I willing to work on maintaining my following and constantly interacting so I don’t loose followers? No. I’m too introverted for that. Coupled with the fact I would have a hard time attending book events to market my books, success is all but a dream.

 

And no, I’m not going to regret it. I always know when it’s time to move on. After all, this was not my first artistic venture. That, however, is a story for another day.

What made it hard for me to give up writing is rather ironic. We’ve come to a point in time where we try so hard to motivate people, we make it hard for them to accept defeat. Trust me, phrases such as ‘No one likes quitters’, and ‘Being tired is a figment of your imagination,’ Are not helpful.

Yet when writing became a chore, when I would rather do anything except write or edit my work, I knew the time was drawing near.

 

Looking back, I think I’m one of those people who hear a good piece of music, and immediately learn to play the piano because I mistake my love of music for the talent. I might not be a writer, but I still love books to the death. For this reason, I’ll be returning to book blogging and book reviewing.

I initially stopped reviewing books for many reasons. One of them was naturally the fear of burning bridges by criticising a prospective agent or editor’s current client.

Well bring me the matches. That bridge is going up in flames baby.