Ctrl+Alt+Delete My Dreams

You know what? I quit.

I quit writing!

I am so tired of staring at my computer, while nothing good comes out. The blank page, the ever-present, ever-ruling tyrant of my life. I keep doing all the things they say. I schedule space to write every day, and I only miss it a few days a week, but STILL.

I’m done.

I quit.

I should be better at this by now. Years of writing little bits of this, little snippets of that. Clever one liners or interesting paragraphs that have no context or plot.

It’s been decades of wanting to be a published author. I keep trying to ignore it.

I put it away, but that urge to write just keeps sneaking its enigmatic head over my shoulder and begging me to indulge it. I put it away after high school, in pursuit of something “more practical,” like my mother said I should do.

I put it away after grad school, because nothing will kill your love of reading and writing like being forced to do it for dozens of hours a week, for six years straight. I think it took me a year to pick up a book to read for fun, now that I am thinking about it.

I put it away after having children, because those tiny blessings (whom I deeply love and adore) robbed me of sleep for years on end. Most days I was doing good to have enough energy to shower, so writing was the last thing on my mind.

What’s killed your love of reading? Your love of writing? Perhaps for you that’s two different subjects, but for me they are inextricably linked for some reason. If I am voraciously reading, I am also inspired to write. If I am in a famine of the written word, I am also a parched desert in my soul, with nothing noteworthy to say to the world.

Yet in each of these stages of life, the clouds cleared and the urge to write came back, and felt stronger than before.

I have wanted to write ever since that book! You know the one, the one that captivated you as a teenager or young adult? It wrecked you emotionally. It took you on an adventure. It made you ponder the universe. It made you think about what was right and wrong, when faced with the real, complicated lives of fictional people (or real people, if you’re into that sort of thing).

You know the one. You’re thinking of it now. The one that sparked the idea: could I do this? Could I write something that would make someone feel the way this book has made me feel?

How long will I suffer thee, elusive status of Writer Who Makes People Feel Things?! Who gives that status out, anyway?

I AM DONE.

I QUIT.

I quit the incessant research! I set aside time to write but my browser tabs keep multiplying, seemingly of their own accord.

Got an interesting time-travel idea? Let’s spend 3 weeks researching quantum physics, quantum mechanics, and the time-space continuum! Let's rewatch Interstellar for the 43rd time, and call it research! (Make Google Chrome your default browser, Click here! Get outta here, Google. I DON’T WANT TO, AND YOU CANNOT MAKE ME! I am just trying to avoid writing– I mean do some research to make my writing authentic!)

I really need these kinds of articles in layman's terms, how can I be expected to write a meaningful story that includes this kind of PhD level information? Is there a book out there called Time Travel for People Who Just Want to Know Enough to Write a Romantic Sci-Fi About Love Across Space and Time?!

Maybe we should just move on… Yes, we’re getting off track here. The point is:

I quit. Writing is hard and has very little reward in it, most of the time.

I keep trying to quit the research, but it keeps finding me and I bet it keeps finding you too, right? Oh you get really interested in historic Appalachian bootleggers, in the 1920s? Great, let’s spend a week looking at census records in Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Let’s listen to Appalachian folk songs and read about the “wettest counties” in the region. Maybe it’ll really help with the vibes of this mysterious thing I want to write.

Did you know that there’s a place in Virginia, which had a population of 100 people around the Prohibition Era in the Southern United States? Did you also know that 99 out of those 100 people were involved with organized moonshining and bootlegging of alcohol during Prohibition? And all of this running from the police in Appalachia during Prohibition culminated in the formation of NASCAR.

Well I had to know, so now you have to know!

(I am really going to need a drink after this, she thinks to herself, sardonically. Too bad I gave up drinking years ago.)

I’m over it! I quit googling “writing tips.” I saved the writing playlists on Spotify and Amazon music, and even over on Youtube, and I love them. I subscribed to a million Instagram accounts and a million more Substack accounts that all promised the same thing. Great writing. Fame. Notoriety. Guaranteed success. The more I watch them, though, the less I write.

Has this happened to you, friend? Maybe it’s only happening to me. Maybe I should quit!

Serious question: Do you need music to write? If it’s totally quiet, I just hear the bouncing emptiness of my own head, which refuses to give me anything but thoughts about my grocery list that needs tweaking, or the laundry that needs folding. The music seems to drown out the surface thoughts so I can hear myself better, even though, in typing that out, and re-reading it, it doesn’t make any sense at all.

I have found all the best Spotify playlists and Amazon music playlists, but each one is a different feeling. I can listen to Finding Bigfoot in Appalachia when I’m writing my short story on morally grey bootleggers Prohibition (seriously, do NOT steal that idea from me, y’all. I’m gonna write it one day).

I can listen to Frenemies and Bad Blood when writing about interpersonal drama. I can listen to If the 12 Disciples of Jesus Sat On the Back Porch and Picked a Banjo when I’m writing poetry that relates to my faith. I really enjoy the epic fantasy playlists that are out there too, I have saved around 40 of them, by now. How many do you have?

Sorry, I got distracted… What was I saying?

Oh yes, I’m over it!!!

I quit!

No more looking at all the social media ads for "book coaches" who I have never heard of, but always have the unique secret sauce to helping me finally write that darn novel idea that’s been haunting me since I was 14 years old.

I quit looking to social media for quick tips, as if a 90 second video can cure my writing ills. I inevitably find myself lost in a sea of information that is clearly biased one way or the other, but always has sensationalized, exaggerated, click-bait titles!

Get your six figure book deal, just like me! Buy my course for [I don’t make enough money writing, so please pay me so I can feed my family] here!

Subscribe to my patreon for a few Starbucks coffees a month!

Click here and I’ll give you all my SeCrEt TiPs ThE iDuStRy DoEsN’t WaNt YoU tO kNoW!

Trad Publishing is the ONLY way forward! Click here for more…

Indie publishing is the NEW trad publishing, so click HERE, actually, and you will ACTUALLY learn what you need to know to ACTUALLY write the next [insert famous book of the month here (it’ll change next week, but this link will not update for a year)].

Self publishing is the future, find all you need here at this link, because querying is for losers!

Small presses treat you better than trad publishers, avoid the big 5 with this [affiliate link riddled] article on the best small presses to look at, when you’re ready to publish your book! (Don’t mind the small fee they paid me to say all this, okay? It’s just between friends *wink wink, nudge nudge*)]

Small presses are a SCAM, read these 10 horror stories of writers whose dreams were ripped away from them here in my [also riddled with affiliate links] article!

After a few minutes (or hours or days) of scrolling, I find it hard to remember what I even loved about writing in the first place. Everyone seems so certain that their path is the right path, how is an indecisive person like me supposed to know who is right?!

There’s also all the drama of writing, nowadays anyway. Who has time to keep up with it all? There is a corner of the internet called BookTok (or BookSta if you’re old like me and cannot handle the time-suck of Tiktok), where there is “drama” between people who have never met. People yell into an echochamber, until their hot take reaches outside of their circle, and then everyone can see how little they actually care about anyone but themselves. But then they just delete their socials, come up with a new pseudonym, and they’re off to the races again!

I won’t even get into reader spaces vs writer spaces, closed door romance/romantasy vs open door romance/romantasy, whether using an em dash means you used AI, and the whole issue of AI and the problems it creates in society at large, and especially in the writing space. On and on down the rabbit hole it goes.

A few hundred comments and some funny animal videos later, and it’s all enough to make a person forget what they love about reading and writing. Thinking about writing takes up so much time, who takes the time to actually write?

What was that idea that caught my attention at bedtime last night? I jotted it down…

Oh wait. I remembered another thing I wanted to tell you that makes me want to quit!

I quit with a google doc list of HUNDREDS of ideas for books, poems, short stories, and novels. Do you have a “running thoughts” document? Or maybe you’re analog and you keep a physical notebook? What do you call it?

Because I call mine “ideas,” but very few of them have ever translated to an actual poem or short story, and you can bet your bottom dollar that NOT-A-ONE of them has translated to a novel. A chapter or two. A beginning. An Ending. Never that elusive middle.

Maybe I should call it “the ideas graveyard,” where idle thoughts, lists of names, and snippets of dialogue float in the cloud, rotting like a stagnant storm that is always roiling and roaring over my head.

So yeah, I am definitely quitting! I quit buying books on the craft of writing, which sit on my shelf and collect dust. I know I should really read them, but some of them are not terribly interesting. Except for Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird, which was wonderful! Seriously entertaining, as well as informative. She can really write, you know? Hers is a writing that is vast and yet accessible. It’s a type of writing that makes me want to write.

Okay, okay. I hear you. You’re right. Books about the craft of writing are necessary and are full of good information, and I would probably benefit from them, but that still isn’t writing! While I am reading craft books or taking another masterclass on The Art of the Short Story, I am keenly– painfully– aware that I am not writing. I am intensely aware of how much I should be writing more, and I am chiding myself for every second spent doing something else. I am told that really only writing will make you a better writer and it’s the thing I keep avoiding!

Maybe it’s easier to quit than push through the difficult part of improving myself. Maybe it’s easier to read the wonderful short stories on Reedsy (not to be too meta, here) than it is to publish them myself and hope for the best. What if someone has negative feedback for me? What if they say “I loved it!” but they actually didn’t read it, and they’re just commenting in the hopes that I’ll go read their story in return.

What if they think I’m a bad writer who should really hang up The Elusive Dream, and go do something else with my life? What if I’m not afraid of other people’s opinions at all, but I’m actually afraid of what I think other people will think? An invisible Dictator, shaped like me, yet something else entirely, which has set up a fortress in my mind, and locked my words behind the iron gates. It would be poetic, if it wasn't so frustrating.

Maybe if I read the winning and short-listed stories, I can reverse engineer what the judges were looking for and recreate it. But there’s too many great stories on Reedsy to just read the few that get highlighted. Some of the best stories I’ve ever read are ones that have never gotten recognition. Some of the best writers, whose stories I return to, again and again, are ones that rarely get shortlisted or win awards. Maybe the awards aren’t the point.

Some part of me thinks if I just read enough, study enough, research enough, revise my stories and poems enough, take enough masterclasses… that I’ll be able to sit down and write that novel in one stormy afternoon, when the stars align, my kids are quiet, I have an idea that is inspiring, and enough brain bandwidth to get it all out.

Somehow none of those things seem to happen on the same day, no matter how many days in a row I schedule time to write.

You want to know something really weird, writer friend? Even though this is basically a rant –or a stream of consciousness, if you’re fancy– this feeling is the thing I love. This feeling that I’ve been having while I’ve been in the flow of writing for the past hour or so. The feeling of crafting something cohesive. The feeling of thoughts flowing out of my brain and into my fingers, and onto the blank page. The feeling of conquering the Blank Page Tyrant of Evil and Misery (let me just get out my thesaurus and see if I can find a better word for evil… actually that seems like a distraction. Forget it, let’s just keep it simple).

Maybe this is worth pursuing. Maybe I’ll try, one more day. One more page. One more book. One more class. One more short story contest. Maybe it’s less about the “published” aspect of it all, and more about the “writer” reality of it all.

Writing gives me the feeling that I’ve done something. Started something and finished it. Created something from nothing. On my own. With my brain–not AI, even if I use dashes.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s worthwhile, in and of itself.

(Well, okay… I didn’t create something from “nothing,” per se… it came from a handy Reedsy prompt! So thanks for that, mysterious people behind the screens at Reedsy.)