Writers & Border Collie Brain

The problem with quitting

Hey there,

First, I’d like to say thank you for the comments and private emails in response to last week’s post. It seems many of us are going through similar things, which isn’t great news, but at least it means we’re not alone.

Okay, so this week, let’s talk about a particular dreaded thought:

“I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.”

That is a thought I’ve had about writing on more than one occasion over the past few years, and it’s a thought that has been expressed to me by a number of my fellow writers lately.

It’s a scary feeling to acknowledge this thought because wait, isn’t this the thing we’ve wanted to do all of our lives? Isn’t this our Dream with a capital D? How dare we be so ungrateful? *insert other negative thoughts our brains like to come up with*

But I’ve been pondering this thought/feeling more deeply lately, and I think maybe it isn’t about the writing. I think, when in burnout or teetering on the edges of it, we conflate the business stuff with the creative stuff, melding it all into one thing.

But it’s not one thing.

Writing is creative expression. It’s what came first for most of us. The business is the business. It’s what came after. And right now, the business is kind of crazy-making. The rules are always changing. The pressure is ever-increasing. The methods to get the word out to readers are going through what Cory Doctorow calls an “enshitiffication” process (read more in his article on TikTok’s Enshittification, which also describes how things like Facebook and Amazon got bad for users first and then bad for businesses—like authors—next.)

But writing, actual writing, for many of us, used to be the thing that made us feel better.

I was thinking this week, as I listened to the fantastic audiobook I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai, that often the main characters in books are outcasts of some sort (especially if the story takes place in a school setting or looks back on school years.) They’re the goth girl or the bookish nerd or the quirky theatre kid.

Why? It’s not just because it makes for interesting characters. It’s because oftentimes, authors were those kids. I know I was. Many of us were drawn to writing because we didn’t feel like we quite fit in or we felt like others didn’t “get” us or didn’t see the world in the same way. Writing gave us a place to be truly ourselves, even if we were telling a fictional story. Writing helped.

So, now, when we find ourselves in this career we’ve dreamed of, but writing starts feeling like a job or a dreaded task instead of an escape or a gift, it’s extra devastating. We’ve lost something special. Writing was our thing. Our answer.

But maybe that’s not really what’s going on. Maybe writing is still waiting for us underneath all those layers of Business Stress.

I found this passage from an article by author Tara June Winch in The Guardian. (They have a new series of writers writing about what makes them happy now. I recommend reading them.) But here’s what Winch says:

“Not yet a year after my brother’s death and still trying to battle the grief, I’d walked about Darwin with the late artist and elder Uncle Jack. I’d told him about this pain, about how I thought I was sick, or an alcoholic, that I’d never make it out of sadness. He told me that I’d already obtained all the help I’d ever need for my ailments. He said, “You’re a writer, all you have to do is your art and you’ll be well”.

Back then I thought writing was the source of my illness, but as time goes, I think Uncle Jack was right, that it’s part of my cure. Not because it is easy, but because it is so painfully difficult. I think its significance is the way through to happiness. Through the writing I am drawn back to myself, I can work the existential problems on the page, reckon the past.”

—Tara June Wench, Happiness Is the Moment Just Before the Thought to Take a Photograph

Writing as curative. That feels right to me. Because I can tell you, after taking a sabbatical early last year and not being in writing mode currently, I feel the existential itch when I’m not creating. I may be too burnt out to have an idea. I may not have the energy to write. I may not have the desire to make a marketable thing. BUT, that urge to create? Doesn’t go away. And it can make my brain really restless if I don’t give it something to work on.

That’s the problem with quitting. Quitting writing, for most of us, won’t fix things. It actually may hurt us in the long run.¹ I’m not talking financially, that’s a separate matter, but mentally/spiritually.

It makes me think of a passage in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic about border collies and creative minds. Here’s what she says:

“Possessing a creative mind, after all, is something like having a border collie for a pet: It needs to work, or else it will cause you an outrageous amount of trouble. Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents (eating the couch, digging a hole through the living room floor, biting the mailman, etc.). It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case that if I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something (myself, a relationship, or my own peace of mind.)

I firmly believe that we all need to find something to do in our lives that stops us from eating the couch.”

—Big Magic, pgs. 171-172

I think the problem with the current state of things is that we have lots to keep us busy and to drain us (social media, marketing, branding, general life duties, etc.) but our creative mind is left eating the couch. The border collie doesn’t want to think about target audiences or Amazon ads or newsletter swaps. And maybe it doesn’t want to write book 3 in a series because it’s tired of that particular toy. That toy doesn’t squeak anymore. It wants a new meaty story bone to chew, and many times we’re just throwing it scraps because that’s all we have the energy (or space in the book release schedule) to manage.

Which can make us think we’ve lost our love of writing (or capacity to write) but really, our writing would still be there for us if we could find a way to take care of ourselves and make room for it again. Hell, writing won’t just be there for us, but it could actually make us feel good instead of stressed. Remember what that used to feel like?

Ahhh, that new writer feeling

As usual, I don’t have a solid answer to offer on how to get there (I’m so helpful that way!), but I can tell you what I’m doing. I’m working on being open to inspiration—all inspiration. Without thought to how an idea would fit with my brand or with what would sell best or whether I think I have the writing chops to pull a particular idea off. Whatever frisbee the universe wants to throw at my internal border collie, I’m game to entertain right now.

This wouldn’t have been practical in previous years when I was still under contract, but I’ve created this current uncontracted space on purpose. Yes, I would like to continue to make a living with my writing, but it’s that whole metaphor about letting fields go fallow in order to have better crops later. There are so many stories out there about writers, artists, musicians etc. that have the theme of “they thought the best of their career was over but then they disappeared for a while and came back and made their most lasting work.” I’m not disappearing, but I’m trying to at least clear the mental decks so that I can be open to what inspiration shows up next.

Also, Elizabeth Gilbert says if you’re complaining all the time about creativity, inspiration doesn’t really want to hang out with you, lol. So I’m trying not to be a bummer to hang out with. ;)

We shall see how it goes.

Anyone else experiencing Border Collie Brain? Do you get the “quitting” thoughts?

Let me know in the comments or hit reply to this email.

—Roni

1. That’s not to say that someone can’t quit the business of publishing and be okay. I know plenty of writers who left publishing but still find ways to feed their creativity in other ways.