I wrote fiction in high school, and then in college and grad school, and then it came to a halt for six years.
Why did you stop? Work. I started a job as an editor (read: doing marketing and batting cleanup on client reports) for a healthcare consulting firm, and it consumed me. Deadlines were always looming, and when I had time off I just couldn't discipline myself to write.
What did you need to resume? What prompted your resuming? Eventually, I joined the SCA, started using that as a creative outlet, and began writing articles and such for them. Having primed that creative pump, I started yearning to write again... only, catch-22, while I was in the SCA I kept so busy I didn't have (or rather make) time to write. So I quit the SCA and turned to writing.
Another thing that pushed me was pregnancy -- I realized I'd better get cracking and finish at least a first draft before my daughter was born, or I wouldn't have time. Paradoxically, I was a lot more productive after she was born (until the freelance work started picking up).
Did you fret about not-writing when you were not writing? Yes and no. I kept thinking, "you should write, you keep saying you want to write..." but then I'd be dragged into the next major project and it would go back into the background for a while. I'd get ideas, scribble them down and lose the notebooks.
Were you afraid that you had given it up for good? Sometimes. Sometimes I thought I'd never get back into it, or that I was losing ground by not "practicing" writing. And there were times when I'd look at the accomplishments of others and think, "I'm __ years old, and here so and so already has two books published and I'm a loser who hasn't even finished one."
I'm, er, still a loser who hasn't had a book published. But at least I'm writing. And even finishing things.
When you resumed, how long did it take you to have faith in yourself? I have to rediscover that all the time. Writing gets shunted aside for work; it pays the bills. It gets shunted aside for time with my daughter. And then I think, "If you were a REAL writer, you would write every day, no matter what..." But I keep trying. I gave up on short stories for a while, figuring that with limited time, I should stick to finishing the novel, but now I have two short stories in progress and it feels good to work on them. I take it day by day.
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Why did you stop? Work. I started a job as an editor (read: doing marketing and batting cleanup on client reports) for a healthcare consulting firm, and it consumed me. Deadlines were always looming, and when I had time off I just couldn't discipline myself to write.
What did you need to resume? What prompted your resuming? Eventually, I joined the SCA, started using that as a creative outlet, and began writing articles and such for them. Having primed that creative pump, I started yearning to write again... only, catch-22, while I was in the SCA I kept so busy I didn't have (or rather make) time to write. So I quit the SCA and turned to writing.
Another thing that pushed me was pregnancy -- I realized I'd better get cracking and finish at least a first draft before my daughter was born, or I wouldn't have time. Paradoxically, I was a lot more productive after she was born (until the freelance work started picking up).
Did you fret about not-writing when you were not writing? Yes and no. I kept thinking, "you should write, you keep saying you want to write..." but then I'd be dragged into the next major project and it would go back into the background for a while. I'd get ideas, scribble them down and lose the notebooks.
Were you afraid that you had given it up for good? Sometimes. Sometimes I thought I'd never get back into it, or that I was losing ground by not "practicing" writing. And there were times when I'd look at the accomplishments of others and think, "I'm __ years old, and here so and so already has two books published and I'm a loser who hasn't even finished one."
I'm, er, still a loser who hasn't had a book published. But at least I'm writing. And even finishing things.
When you resumed, how long did it take you to have faith in yourself? I have to rediscover that all the time. Writing gets shunted aside for work; it pays the bills. It gets shunted aside for time with my daughter. And then I think, "If you were a REAL writer, you would write every day, no matter what..." But I keep trying. I gave up on short stories for a while, figuring that with limited time, I should stick to finishing the novel, but now I have two short stories in progress and it feels good to work on them. I take it day by day.