WRITING
A Reply To “Why Do So Many Writers Give Up So Quickly?”
I never gave up; I just took a four-month vacation. Yeah, right!
--
Some people board the writing plane with high hopes only to end up in a plane crash — their plane either ran out of fuel or didn’t gather enough speed for a successful take-off.
My plane crashed after seven months.
Not long ago, Mike Lewis asked a question that resonated with me and made me break the four-month silence. Here’s his question:
why do so many writers give up so quickly?
One of my colleagues asked me a similar question: Rasa, when will you start writing? To be fair, she meant writing a book, but the same question can be applied to writing on Medium.
Well, I have been asking myself the same question, and even though I have yet to find a satisfactory answer, I will try to compose one for Mike and my 500+ followers on Medium.
Until April of this year, I was somewhat active on Medium. Once Carmellita, a Medium savvy writer, wrote in the comment section that if I kept up with the good job, I would reach significant milestones, like 1000 followers and steady metrics, in no time.
Many moons have passed since that comment, the metrics have dived, and I neither blame anyone nor plan on making excuses, but I want to list some reasons why despite being on the path to success, I gave up writing consistently.
Why did my plane (writing on Medium) crash?
To paraphrase the iconic Eagle’s quote:
I never gave up; I just took a four-month vacation. Yeah, right? Be honest, don’t sugarcoat it!
I wish it indeed were a vacation, but it wasn’t.
The official reason for not writing
At the beginning of April, I was offered a job; on April 7 I said yes to it, and from that day, I felt like I had hopped on a fast-moving train. The job was in another city, and I had agreed to begin working on April 25. Until that day, I was commuting…
