If you stopped writing for a long time

[pegkerr]

If you stopped writing for a long time--and I mean a LONG time, on the order of several years--and then managed to start again successfully, I would like to hear a little about your experience. Why did you stop? What did you need to resume? What prompted your resuming? Did you fret about not-writing when you were not writing? Were you afraid that you had given it up for good? When you resumed, how long did it take you to have faith in yourself?

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I stopped writing fiction for about seven years, mostly because my ex-husband told me I wasn't any good. And he's good -- better than I was, except he never ever finishes anything. I mean he was right, I wasn't any good, but that didn't mean giving up was the right thing, even so. During that time I wrote a fair bit of non-fiction -- editorials for the events guide I worked for, and RPG stuff with Ken, mostly subsequently published, but the only fiction and poetry I wrote was stuff I absolutely had to write, and was, um, two poems and two short stories and the first ten thousand words of two novels. Never more than I could write in one burst. I didn't believe in myself at all.

I started writing again when someone I knew on usenet bewailed the fact that there wasn't more Rohirrim poetry and I laughed and wrote some and emailed it to him. He then bullied me into taking myself seriously and the subsequent re-evaluation of myself and my writing and my time priorities pretty much ended my first marriage about eighteen months before I sold my first novel.

I had got much better in the time I wasn't practicing. Maybe just being older, maybe having read more, and some skills from writing non-fiction carry over -- mostly those to do with shaping long things.

The difference between you and me there is firstly that you have already published two novels (I don't think I could ever not have faith in myself after that sort of validation), and secondly that I am not depressive (which is probably why you don't), and thirdly I am selfish and will make the writing my priority. (Did Zorinth suffer from that, compared with your girls? Probably. He didn't do any martial arts until last year when he was old enough to organise it and go by himself. There were times when his dinner would be late because I was writing, when I wasn't paying attention to him because I was writing, he couldn't assume a hundred percent of my attention whenever he wanted it, when we couldn't afford things because I didn't take a job that wouldn't have given me time to write, and he grew up knowing I wasn't going to utterly immolate myself on the pyre of what was better for him.)

[redbird]

Did Zorinth suffer from that, compared with your girls? Probably. He didn't do any martial arts until last year when he was old enough to organise it and go by himself. There were times when his dinner would be late because I was writing, when I wasn't paying attention to him because I was writing, he couldn't assume a hundred percent of my attention whenever he wanted it, when we couldn't afford things because I didn't take a job that wouldn't have given me time to write, and he grew up knowing I wasn't going to utterly immolate myself on the pyre of what was better for him.

I don't think that counts as suffering: Zorinth's dinner was late sometimes, but he didn't go hungry, and frankly I don't think it's good for children to grow up knowing their mothers will immolate themselves on that pyre. Okay, so he didn't take martial arts until this year, but he's not going, five or ten years from now, to assume that any woman he's involved with will do all the boring work and put her needs ahead of his. (I suspect that what girls learn from having that sort of self-sacrificing mother is different, but possibly just as destructive. And Peg is not that sort of mother either: I know that from reading what she's written about looking for a balance.)