Giving up ?

by Amanda Paquin
29th November 2012

Hello,

This might sound a little silly to ask, but do you guys ever have moments where you just want to throw out your drafts or shove your un published novels aside and call it quits ?

I mean I had just finished printing out a few pages I was about to edit, and found out I wasn't accepted in a literature program for college. It just crushed me. :(

Replies

oh, cheesecake...

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John
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John Wilson
30/11/2012

It's a common thing. And money for your art is the biggest confirmation of all. Apart from renting a film which portrays the true life story of a writer, or artist of some kind, in peril always helps me, I think you should just allow yourself to be blue at this time. And cheesecake.

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melanie fallon
30/11/2012

Many thanks Adrain for the George Orwell quote. It brought to mind something Graham Greene said: 'Writing has its own particular forms of hell.'

I wrote a story inspired by this quote entitled: 'Murdering your Darlings' - you know how we have to get rid of the bits in our work which we think/hope are really powerful, because they simply don't fit? My story is a magic realist piece about a writer who... well goes through hell in various ways. It's not quite working yet, because at the back of my mind is the wonderful story Stephen King wrote on a theme around the hell of writing: 'The Secret Window'. I feel my story is nowhere near that standard - so it's blocking me a bit. 'The Secret Window' has been made into a film. Even though I know the ending now, it still scares me to death when I watch it. Adrian quotes: '...demon(s) whom one can neither resist nor understand'. Watch this film, and see just how pertinent those words are!

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Melanie Amri
30/11/2012