by Gordon Hamilton

Created on: February 09, 2009

The time to call it quits in any vocation or occupation can very often be self-evident. It may be a physical activity for which we reach a stage where we are no longer capable of performing it to the required standard, it may be an occupation which we simply no longer feel the love for or have the heart for and know that it is time for a change of direction. With writing, however, determining when it is time to call it quits can never be so cut and dried.

If, for example, we are referring to a professional sports person, there will come a time in their career where either they will sustain an injury or reach an age whereby they know that to continue in the pursuit of their career is not a viable option. It is likely that their bodies will tell them that it is time to quit and move on to something else. Similarly, if we find ourselves in a job which we used to love but no longer have the passion for or feel we are not achieving what we should due to constraints beyond our control, we can pack up and move on to pastures new.

With writing, however, the difficulty is that writing is never just a career or a job. It may be such as well but it is above all a passion. We are born to be writers and what we write are words which grow inside each of us and simply have to be set free. Determining that we are going to quit any such activity is rarely therefore a conscious decision we can make with any great degree of success.

What may be a necessary consideration for the career writer is having to decide when they are not making enough money from their writing to pursue it any longer as a full time occupation. This may be for a variety of reasons and a very tough decision will have to be made to find alternative employment for very practical reasons. This is quite different, however, from the concept of quitting writing altogether.

If a writer has been eking out a living via his craft for some time but the unpaid bills are mounting and there are little immediate prospects of this changing, he or she may have to obtain an unrelated type of job simply in order to survive. It is perfectly plausible for them however to continue writing in their spare time, continue making submissions to publishers and continue contributing to their blogs and article hosting sites.

What we are looking at in the above instance is not deciding to quit writing, it is deciding to feed ourselves and our families to the best of our abilities. Asking the true writer to decide to quit writing is like asking a dog to quit barking, or a chicken to quit laying eggs. It is our passion, it is what we do - and that is likely to remain the case for as long as we are alive.

Learn more about this author, Gordon Hamilton.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.