Well, we survived the power outage yesterday, and the windchill now is only -18 F (-28 C). We spent about 2 1/2 hours in candlelight and bundled up with hot tea (the stove still worked) in hand. We still had charge on our computers and internet from a backup power system for our modem and router.
So I'm still here, despite the cold, despite the fact that I got another rejection yesterday.
I'm still here, but I don't know what that means.
I think about giving up writing at times. I've slowed down considerably on the writing front to edit the backlog of what I've written, so it's harder to remember the thrill of writing new things. It's easier to examine my writing, find the places where I fell into mediocrity, and wonder if my work deserves to get published.
It's harder to remember the reasons I started writing -- because I felt I had something important to say -- and easier to consider the work, the hard work of writing and editing and querying -- with no guaranteed rewards.
It's harder to call myself a writer and easier to let it fade away and find another hobby.
I've given up things before -- I used to write songs. I used to be a singer-songwriter until I divorced my guitarist twenty-some years ago and couldn't perform my songs anymore. Those songs, almost twenty in number, still exist; I don't sing them anymore. I wrote a song a couple years ago with my friend Mary Shepherd -- it's a Christmas carol. I don't know what to do with it.
Giving up is not necessarily a bad thing. If the practice isn't worth the pain, if the resources put in do not yield rewards, the logical thing is not to continue putting time into something that's not working. To put more time or money into a fruitless pursuit or a junker car is called the sunk-cost fallacy, and like all fallacies, it is illogical.
I don't know that I'm going to give up writing, but I have to look at it as a viable option, and ask myself if it's still worth the time to me if I can't get traditionally published.
My feelings about self-publishing are worth their own essay.
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