Knowing when to quit: Why I decided to stop writing fiction

Less than 12 hours ago, I hit “send” on my latest book. It just appeared for sale on Amazon, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out. It’s my fourth book in four months this year, and I’ve got another one coming next month.

It’s No. 30 overall for me, if you include four short educational workbooks I produced a while back. I’m happy with that, too.

Which is why this may come as a surprise, at least at first blush: I’ve decided to stop writing fiction.

And I’m OK with that.

To clarify: My latest book is a nonfiction book. So was my first published work, and roughly two-thirds of my books overall.

But the decision to stop working on novels wasn’t an easy one. I’ve wanted to be a novelist since my junior year in high school, when I wrote a short story called The Adventures of Krack, the tongue-in-cheek tale of a medieval knight. The story itself has long since been lost or discarded, and the only things I remember about it are the title and the theme — and the fact that the assignment called for three handwritten pages, and my story wound up being 11.

I knew then and there that I enjoyed doing this, that I wanted to do this for a living.

The challenge

I also knew that writing books as a career was, shall we say, challenging, and I wanted a steady paycheck. So I became a journalist. This was, I thought, a reasonable compromise: I’d still be working with words, but I’d also have a guaranteed income. It worked out nicely until the bottom fell out of the newspaper business and I found myself unemployed.

Suddenly, I had time to pursue my real dream of being a novelist.

It didn’t work.

Let my qualify that: I’ve published eight works of fiction, including a children’s story and a short-story collection. My traditionally published work has gotten good reviews in the press. So has my self-published stuff. My books get between 4 and 5 stars on Amazon. People generally tend to like my stuff ... if they read it. And there, as they say, is the rub, as it is for many of my peers. In three words: not enough readers.

One review of Memortality declared that “readers will assuredly want — if not expect — more.” I gave them a sequel, but alas, neither book sold particularly well, so the third installment in the planned trilogy languished as my motivation waned, even though I had it all plotted out.

I’ve tried since then, gotten excited all over again about another original idea and a new cast of cool characters — only to meet with the same result.

Same old story

Stories of disappointing sales are not unusual among authors. They tend to elicit one of two responses: Either you should keep writing for the sheer love of it, and the money be damned, or you should keep writing precisely in order to make money (even if you're not making any now).

The first message goes like this: “It doesn’t matter whether your books sell or not, as long as you enjoy it. If you can afford to write, do it. Don’t sweat the sales figures.” The folks who say this sort of thing are well-meaning, and there’s some truth to what they say, but what they miss is that writing is about communication. If you’re not communicating with anyone, what’s the point? You might as well write a diary.

The second group says money does matter. The reason you haven’t broken though, they kindly suggest, is that you’re doing something wrong. There are plenty of people in this category just itching to make money off your desperation to succeed: “All you have to do is buy my how-to book (one of several thousand on the market), take my masterclass, pay me to market it. ...”

The vast majority of these ideas are regurgitated and repackaged common sense that most serious authors have already tried dozens of times. It’s like picking up a greatest hits collection from an over-the-hill band when you already own all their releases. Pointless.

These two groups have one thing in common: They both think you should keep writing. Plaster those rejection notices on the wall. Look at how many J.K. Rowling got before she hit it big with Harry Potter. It’s a popular and “positive” message, but it creates a false narrative: If you love what you’re doing, you’re dedicated and you’re good, you’ll succeed. As Journey sang, “Don’t stop believin’. Hold on to the feelin’!”

Sometimes, though, you can’t hold on. Or, maybe, it’s better not to. To quote John Lennon from Watching the Wheels: “No longer riding on the merry-go-round. I just had to let it go.”

Crisis? What Crisis?

That’s the point I’ve reached.

For years, I’ve been listening to that second group and flagellating myself for not getting it right, even as some of my peers have hit upon success. Online book tour? I’ll try that. Snazzy cover? Hey, that looks really good. It’s bound to sell! Self-publish? Sure thing. Get an outside publisher? Check.

Send a press release? TV appearance? Radio show? Convention? Book signing? Networking? Reviews? Cool blog? (Hey, that’s what this is!)

But what if none of that works? At what point do you realize that not everyone is J.K. Rowling — that she’s the exception to the rule, not the template? This should be obvious. How many authors, after all, are worth nearly $1 billion? Yet bestselling authors routinely “encourage” their less successful peers with assurances of “if I can do it, you can, too.”

They mean well, but they’re not telling the whole truth. It’s almost like a lottery winner saying, “If I won the Powerball, you can, too.” That’s technically accurate, but the odds against it are overwhelming.

Now, I’ll grant that writing a book takes a lot more skill than buying a lottery ticket, but so does (for instance) playing basketball. At one point, I practiced more than 200 days in a row. I’m 6-foot-5 and reasonably athletic. Does that mean I’m going to be the next Stephen Curry? That I’m going to make the NBA? That I’d even be the best player in a playground pickup game? No, no and no.

My point is, we’re so determined to hold on to our dreams, we indulge in a kind of magical thinking, assuring ourselves that if we work hard enough, get good enough and check all the right boxes, we’re bound to succeed.

Until we don’t.

Decisions, decisions

Now, you may think that I’m writing this out of resentment. I’m announcing to the world that I’m giving up on writing fiction. Isn’t that like the guy who rage-quits on social media or, to use another timeworn basketball analogy, takes his ball and goes home?

Not this time. There’s no doubt, I’ve gone through a lot of resentment, bitterness and frustration over this, and I know some of it’s still there. But that’s not why I’m writing this. For one thing, I’m under no illusion that this blog will be widely read, or that many people will care about whether I keep writing fiction or not. I don’t have that expectation.

In fact, this is all about letting go of false expectations and looking at things with a clear eye and a positive outlook going forward. I realized that I don’t have a positive outlook about fiction anymore, to the point that it’s no longer even enjoyable. So why keep doing it? Why not devote my time and energy to things I do enjoy? There’s no shame in that, despite what the “don’t stop believin’” crowd may tell you.

That’s the reason I’m writing this: To tell you that it’s OK, if you’ve come to the end of your creative journey, to move on to something else. Even if it was your childhood dream. Even if you were sure this was what you were destined to do in life. Acknowledging that is unbelievably hard — harder, in some ways, than continuing to fight for it.

Don’t stop because you’re bitter or resentful. Don’t rage-quit in a bid for sympathy. Quit because you see a better path, and then go for it!

Never say never

Every writer is on a unique journey. You shouldn’t quit just because someone else suggested it as an option, any more than you should keep trying because someone else encouraged it. Those are your decisions. They shouldn’t be made by trolls who write scathing reviews or con artists who try to sell you a bill of goods about being “the next big thing.”

Yes, it’s a good idea to look at what works and what doesn’t — and to adjust your approach to writing or your marketing strategy based on that. But you know what? You can try so hard at so many different things that, if they don’t work out, you spend more time second-guessing yourself than you do writing. Then you’ll start beating yourself up over it, which can send you into an endless roller-coaster that’s not good for your mental health or your productivity as a writer.

I realized I’d reached that point, and I didn’t want to be there anymore, which is why I decided to stop writing fiction. I’d started another novel and, 12,000 words in, I realized my heart just wasn’t in it, and I didn’t see a pathway to making it a success: to communicating with actual readers.

That’s when I decided to stop asking endless questions and making endless adjustments, because I realized it wasn’t doing me any good. At a certain point, I had to feel good enough about myself to stop asking why it didn’t work and just accept the most frustrating answer of all:

I don’t know.

And I may never know.

And, I realized, that’s OK.

I still reach readers with my nonfiction and, while I can’t make a living with that alone, at least I’ve developed a small and somewhat dependable niche.

None of this is to say I won’t write more fiction at some point in the future, but it’s not to say I will, either. If I come up with a killer story idea that grabs me by the throat and demands to be written, who am I to argue? But I’ll have to feel like it’s worth my while.

Right now, it simply isn’t. I’ve got better things to do.

So, at least for now:

The end.

Dixie dilemma: Old highway names and slavery’s stain

It was easy when I lived in California. I wrote books about highways marked by straightforward numbers (Highway 99 and Highway 101). No controversy there. They had names, too, but “El Camino Real,” “Golden State Boulevard” and “The Hollywood Freeway” are pretty benign.

Then, I moved to the South, and I wanted to keep writing about highways. My first offering, Yesterday’s Highways, dealt mostly with numbered roads on the federal highway system, like Route 66. But before those roads had numbers, they had names. Nothing else, just names.

They were called auto trails, privately funded highways that were part gravel, part pavement and part dirt that crisscrossed the country in the early years of the 20th century. They’re the subject of my forthcoming work, America’s First Highways.

The highway builders promoted them by naming them for larger-than-life figures like Lincoln and Roosevelt, Jackson and Jefferson. Or for geography, adopting names like Yellowstone and Pikes Peak.

In the South, however, highway builders paid tribute to figures like Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, “heroes” of the Confederacy. I put “heroes” in quotes, because I can’t fathom ever applying such a term to men who fought a bloody war for a system of government that brutally enslaved human beings.

When I shot the cover art for my book Martinsville Memories, depicting this Southern town’s historic courthouse, I purposely excluded the Confederate monument on the front lawn. As I’ve written in the past, I don’t believe the Confederacy should be celebrated.

Yet I did want to celebrate the auto trails that bore the names of these men. The question was how to do so without celebrating the men themselves. For one thing, I view the monuments alongside these roads more as tributes to the roads’ builders than to slavery. 

Carl Fisher, a man who built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and developed Miami Beach, would have been an impressive figure even if he hadn’t started the two most significant auto trails: the Lincoln and Dixie highways. The names would seem an interesting contrast. The first, running east to west was named for “The Great Emancipator,” while the second, oriented north and south, bore a name many associate with the Confederacy.

“Dixie” was, after all, the title of the most famous Confederate anthem, often performed my minstrels in blackface. Yet Lincoln himself deemed it “one of the best tunes” he’d ever heard, and the term “Dixie” started off as a geographical reference to the Mason-Dixon Line separating Pennsylvania and Maryland. Many today still view it in purely geographic terms, and Fisher’s group saw their Dixie Highway as a bridge to  tie the nation back together after the Civil War.

Not that Fisher himself was a saint, by any means. He was sometimes a drunk who, at the age of 35, ditched his fiancée of nine years to marry a 15-year-old girl. And his main purpose in building the road was to give northerners a way to reach his resorts in Miami Beach. It was, for him, a money-making proposition.

When writing about these old roads, it’s impossible to simply ignore their names — even though many conveniently ignore that the Jefferson Highway’s namesake was a slaveholder, too. (A visit to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s estate, can be an eye-opener for its tour of the slave quarters and is highly recommended.)

I’m happy that the Jefferson Davis Highway has been renamed the Richmond Highway through part of Virginia, and it’s fine with me that a portion of the Dixie Highway through Florida is now named for Barack Obama. Another president’s name on an old auto trail is a perfect fit. Plus, I have to say I enjoy the fact that it must have galled Lee Highway boosters that their road passed by a historic African-American church in Marion, Va.

But history is seldom simple. I don’t believe the names of these roads should obscure their importance to the development of our nation’s road system. Nor do I believe that huge turning point in our history should overlook the fact that highways in the South were often built by chain gangs of inmates — most of whom were black and many of whom were unjustly imprisoned.

History should shine a light on virtuous and vile deeds alike, so we can know how to replicate the former and avoid repeating the latter.

That’s what I hope my writing does. It can be a difficult line to walk, but it’s always a worthy goal, and one I intend to keep pursuing.

Photo: An exit for U.S. Highway 11, aka the Lee Highway, in western Virginia (author photo)

Writing: The Great Escape

Over the past five years, I’ve written nearly a dozen freestanding books of various lengths, a couple of short stories, dozens of newspaper columns and more blog entries than I can count.

Why do I do it? Why pursue an occupation that many find daunting to consider and grueling to pursue?

Because I can? No, because I must.

I don’t have any choice. “Writer’s block” to me is nothing more than an excuse not to get started (most often) or not to continue (occasionally). It’s a phantom menace, the voice of the wolf inside my head that I don’t feed very often because the other wolf is a lot hungrier.

George Orwell posited that, putting aside the need to earn a living, there are four great motives for writing prose:

Sheer egoism: “Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc.”

Aesthetic enthusiasm: “Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement.”

Historical impulse: “Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”

Political purpose: “Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.”

Guilty on all counts. Orwell’s “1984” left a lasting impression on me as a young adult, both for its creativity in fashioning an alternate universe and for its insights into the human condition.

I share each of the four motives he mentioned, but all of them together aren’t what keeps me writing. One thing does: Like Orwell, I’m able to create an alternate universe. And, to be blunt, I like it better there.

New worlds, old worlds

Novelists create new worlds; writers of non-fiction revisit old ones. I’ve had the privilege of doing both. As an author of paranormal fantasy/science fiction, I get to imagine what life would be like if the rules were different, if the world were more vibrant, if the challenges less mundane and the means of answering them more noble. Who wants to worry about paying bills, going to the doctor or attending some pointless meeting when you can imagine yourself slaying a dragon – or, far better yet, befriending one?

As an author of historical nonfiction, I get to travel back in time and visit worlds that have passed into memory. I wrote a book about my hometown as it was during my childhood and another about the history of a long-traveled highway. Sorry, H.G. Wells, but I don’t need your time machine. I can research and write my way back into a world that might otherwise have passed to oblivion. Talk about power. Talk about responsibility.

It’s not that I don’t like this world. I have a wonderful wife, two stepsons who are maturing into proverbial “fine young men,” a father who loves me and two cats who provide unconditional affection (they do demand a bowl of kibble and a rub behind the ears, but that’s beside the point). I live in a beautiful town where I don’t have to choose between the beach and the forest and the foothills, because it’s got all three. What’s not to like?

In response, I refer you back to the earlier reference to bills, health concerns, meetings … you get the picture.

I write because, in doing so, I can escape such mundane concerns. I write because I have the audacity to believe that I can create a world more exciting, more honorable, less bitter and less tragic than the one in which I live. A world where whimsy and nostalgia vanquish bigotry and heartache and disease – maybe not every time (a good story has to have conflict, after all), but enough to keep hope alive that I’m headed for a happy ending.

Writer's Paradox

There have been times in this life when I’ve lacked that hope, and it was then that I started writing, first in the angst of teenage isolation, then in the aftermath of job loss and divorce. I suppose that means there’s something to the old cliché about affliction stoking the fires of creativity, which makes this musing something of a paradox: Torment set my pen in motion, a chariot upon which I can escape that self-same torment.

But that paradox no longer matters. I’ve fallen in love with writing, and now that life is good again, I’m not about to quit. This is one of those “till death do us part” things, with one singularly fascinating caveat: My writing will survive me, and will carry a portion of me into the afterlife of the printed page.

That’s something Orwell touched upon in his nod to egoism: Writing offers a taste of immortality achieved through memory preserved – of "memortality," if you will. (I like how that sounds.) And though it’s a taste and nothing more, it’s enough to whet the appetite for what lies beyond. In the next line, on the next page, in the next chapter.

To visit worlds where I’d like to live – and worlds that will outlive me.

This is why I write.

This is why I’ll never stop.

7 Tips for Becoming a Successful Author

What does it take to be a successful author? First, you might want to ask yourself what it means to be a successful author. Since writing's about communication, Job One is to communicate with your reader. If you can do that, everything else is likely to follow: good reviews, a publisher and yes, maybe a few extra dollars. But ignore those things when you're writing or you'll never get there. To get you started, here are seven tips on how to go about it. 

1. Know your craft.

You can't write a book if you don't know how to write a sentence. Don't tell yourself, "The editor will fix that." Two simple facts: No editor will know or care as much about your work as you do. If you use your editor as a crutch, it means you're limping along, and you need to be in the best shape of your life to do this. If your editor is anything but a last line of defense, you're using him/her wrong. You are the expert on your story, so act like it. Care enough to understand language and how to use it. This doesn't mean following your eighth-grade English teacher's rules religiously. Dialogue, for example, should be true to your characters - the rules of grammar be damned. But here's Tip A1: You need to know the rules so you can know when to break them. 

2. Think like a journalist.

Yes, some journalists get lazy and rely on a "paint by numbers" approach to writing. Too often, they fall into the habit of relying on the same clichés passed along to them by police chiefs and public information officers. But they have one advantage most other writers don't: a hard deadline. They can't take the day off because they have "writer's block" or feel like sleeping in. They can't tell their editors they "don't feel like writing today." I asked bestselling author John Scalzi how his background in journalism helped him in his career as an author. This was his answer: The deadlines he faced gave him the discipline to write consistently.

3. Inhabit your world.

Remember when Chevy Chase blindfolded himself in "Caddyshack" and hit the golf ball onto the green? Maybe you don't. (After all, the movie came out in 1980.) His character's advice was to "be the ball." This doesn't mean you should blindfold yourself while you're writing. That probably won't work too well. But it is a good idea to block out distractions and put yourself in the middle of the action. Imagine you're the protagonist or, if you're writing nonfiction, one of the people affected by the events you're describing. The more you're a part of the story, the more invested you are; the better you can describe what's happening and, even more important, the what the characters are feeling. If you like living in your world enough to stay there for eight hours straight writing about it, chances are your readers will, too.

4. Write conversationally.

This is not the same as "writing the way you speak." If you were to do that, the result might not even be coherent. You're a storyteller, so tell a story. Spin a yarn. Don't write a thesis or a form letter. You're not trying to impress people with your vocabulary or talk down to them like a second-grade teacher. You're trying to grab and keep their attention. If you start writing like a bureaucrat or a textbook writer, no one's going to want to read your stuff. Even other bureaucrats fall asleep reading small print, and students have to read textbooks, but they don't want to, do they? Reading should be fun, so have fun with your writing. Your attitude will come through.

5. Don't write a memoir.

Seriously. Is your name Oprah Winfrey or Michael Jordan, Kennedy or Reagan? If not, most people probably aren't going to want to read about your life. Even if you're the best writer since Stephen King, few people outside your immediate family will want to read about the time your Aunt Mabel fell asleep in her mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner when you were 7. Nothing against you or your Aunt Mabel, but subject matter matters. Readers want something they can relate to (yes, that's a dangling modifier, but see Tip 1A). Too many writers use the tired admonition to "write what you know" as an excuse to write about their own lives. The trick is to infuse your writing with what you've learned from your experiences, not relate those experiences verbatim and call them a story.

6. Write like an explorer.

What's around the next bend, over the next hill? Write like you can't wait to find out, and you'll give your readers that same passion for your story. You've heard the advice to "write like a reader," which is good as far as it goes. But go further. If you're reading a good story, you'll want to be an explorer, too. The writing will pull you along, and you'll be eager to turn the page to find out what happens next. Write with that same desire, with a passion to learn about your characters and the world you're describing; your readers will pick up on that and go along for the roller-coaster ride.

7. Write with abandon.

Be fearless. Don't worry about what happens if your manuscript doesn't sell. There aren't agents or publishers, queries or rejection letters in the world you're creating for your readers. You can be whoever you want to be, and that's the beauty of it. Your last book didn't catch on? So start the next one (you should have started it already). Stop thinking about your boss' demands, your favorite video game, the dirty dishes, your Facebook friends or the big game on TV. The minute you pause to let the "real world" intrude upon your creative process, you'll lose the flow and find yourself out of the zone. That zone is your gateway to success.