First Sunday Q&A: Sometimes You Have to Quit

Q: I’ve had a rough year, with my writing. I don’t like to think about the mistakes I made, all the opportunities I should’ve said yes to. I was afraid—of looking stupid, of getting stuck in something that turned out worse than I thought. I played it safe, which is not always the best move. It worked, but it also stifled me. And I see now what I could’ve done, achieved. The regrets are piling up. For one, I wish I’d spent much more time learning about podcasts and setting them up for my new book, way in advance. But my launch has come and gone, and the book feels a bit dead in the water.

Do we get a second chances in publishing? Can I still reach for my dreams, even now?

A: What a terrifically honest question —one that took courage to even send me. Takes a lot to admit mistakes like this. So many of us have them.

Publishing is never predictable, and rarely easy. Efforts are never guaranteed to succeed. But worse, I feel, is to end up with more regrets than satisfaction after your book is in the world. Regrets eat at you. For a long time. And books are out there a long time.

This is one reason I advise writers to never hurry the process. Ten years from now, you still want to be proud of your book and what you achieved, right? But sometimes it’s not that easy. There are pressures all over—financially, socially, in your writing career—that push you to produce. How many books a year? How many social media platforms? How many followers?

It’s not about the numbers, though, when it comes to looking back and feeling those regrets. It’s about the satisfaction of your process, your decisions, your sense of accomplishment. Whether what you had in your heart and mind actually got received by the world, by your readers. That’s what counts, in my view. That’s what nullifies the regrets.

I want to applaud this writer for doing something so many of us wish for: finish a manuscript, get an agent, get the book in reader’s hands. That’s no small feat today. Yes, this writer wanted a lot more from the process. Yet there was a lot achieved, and that’s worth noting.

But we have these war stories, and we make mistakes because we don’t know better. Or we depend on someone or some aspect of publishing we trust that doesn’t turn out to be 100 percent what we wanted. We pass through terrible times, when hopes turn sour. It’s all very hard. (Fear of this happening—all that for naught—causes some writers never to begin.)

This is not going to be an entirely downer post, by the way, because there are ways out. There are second chances. And I think this is what my questioner is asking about: can you go back for a redo?

Second chances in publishing

We’re told the window of publishing is short. If you don’t fly through it within six weeks or six months, your book dies. Yes, that’s true in a certain arena. But some books are slow burners (mine have mostly been, and they are still selling decades later).

Books are around for a long time. I feel, from my own experience, we get many second chances with books we’ve already released. I believe there’s never a time when we lose the opportunity to find new readers.

One of my colleagues spoke of the same regrets as the questioner, wondering if it was too late (a year after her pub date) to get on podcasts. I asked my podcast publicist who said emphatically, no! Never too late. This week, I spoke on a wonderful podcast where the host asked me about all my novels, and we spoke at length about the first one, published in 2009. I’m guessing there will be a few new readers for it, because of her keen interest.

If your books are still in print, they can still be finding those readers.

Another book release can also pump up your backlist—that’s happened to me twice, where a current novel excites interest (and sales) for an earlier one. Maybe the best scenario to sell another book is to make a big splash with the current one, granted. But your readers are still out there, even if your book doesn’t break out.

That’s the short answer to this great question—and I’d encourage this writer to keep supporting the new book. Don’t give up on it! It’s got a lotta life left.

But the question sent me down a different rabbit hole this week. I thought about the psychology of defeat. Why these periods of deep regret happen and is there a pattern, do the bottoming-out times in our larger learning curve generate new progress. I believe they do. And here’s why.

This Sunday’s newsletter will address passages of regret from two perspectives: why they happen and if there’s any predictable sense to the timing, and whether we can indeed repair what’s been broken—get a second chance.

And finally, when it is indeed time to hang up the hat on a writing project.

What regrets teach us

I did a very effective exercise one New Year’s, where I charted the major “mistakes” in my creative life, those decisions still weighted with regret. I wanted to see whether there were any warning signs, things that might have changed my course. What was my state of mind and heart before the mistake, what could I have done differently. And why, if I could discern it, didn’t I.

I also wanted to look carefully at each “mistake” to see what happened because of it. What was the cause and effect in my life.

You notice I’ve put “mistake” in quotes—I had a suspicion that I’d unearth some interesting facts from this interior research. And so I did.

It took a while to list those creative regrets. Many were painful to remember. One, a business I began in my thirties that was an instant success then a very slow unwinding failure, partly because of the economic times and partly from my lack of business experience. Others, like deciding to keep my college major in Russian rather than the art major I longed for (and my instructors urged me towards), were less traumatic but still emotionally fraught. An agent I signed with out of eagerness who mistreated me, a studio I rented and never used enough, art or writing groups I’d abandoned for one reason or another. Rejections that were personal and encouraged me to rewrite and resubmit my stories—and I hadn’t.

There were a lot! Each small and large decision had taken me away from my heart’s desire as a creative person. I noted why, at the time, I’d chosen each path.

Overwhelmingly, the “why” was either fear or ignorance. Fear of becoming fully what I eventually became, as a writer and artist. Ignorance of the time and work it took, believing it would be easy, abject discouragement when it was not. Comparing myself to someone else and believing I’d never be that good.

By the end of the exercise, I felt a lot of compassion for myself as a younger writer and artist. I also saw a pattern emerge. It showed me where second chances come from.

Second chances

It takes a lot of courage to be a creative person. It’s a path full of risk, and it’s often easier to just stay with the herd and not express our unique voice in art, music, writing, dance, or whatever medium we choose. To be a working writer, someone who publishes regularly, we have to be able to stay the course despite repeated rejections. Rejections are part of the creative life. Do we have enough courage to believe in ourselves, even so?

As I made my regrets chart, the pattern I saw, over and over, was the second chance that came later. It was as if the “mistake” opened the door. And once I stopped beating myself up for ignorance or whatever caused it, the second chance appeared. And by then, I was ready to embrace it.

Sparking your life

On a podcast called “Living Your Sparked Second Half,” host Laurie Wright asked me about second chances in my life.

I’ve written before about the life-pivoting experience of being diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer in my forties. No one would wish for this kind of serious illness as a wake-up call, yet it was. Cancer offered a real opportunity: to accept a full-stop, to take time to review everything I had created to that point. I reviewed my marriage, job, writing, home, health choices, friendships. Each lived alongside mistakes and regrets. There was work to be done, I realized.

Of course, I collapsed for a while, hearing that diagnosis, but then I embraced what it meant. If I lived, which I intended to do, I’d design a redo of certain parts of my life that no longer nourished me. I’d welcome a second chance.

Two dreams I’d put aside—for good reasons, like making a living and keeping peace at home—were art and writing. It took me five years after recovery to bring them back into my life. A very radical change.

Are you moving forward or backward?

Regrets come when we give up what’s in our heart for something less. When we accept less than our true worth as creative beings. Sometimes, it’s just a delay of a dream—I can coast for quite a while, living at a kind of sub-norm, just because responsibilities demand it. Or so I believed pre-cancer. Why change the plan when I was earning good money, even if I no longer felt connected to my food writing career? Easier not to rock the boat by pursuing a dream that could be frivolous. Maybe in my twenties, I could do that. But now, in my forties?

Except the regrets pursued me. The cancer lifted a veil that kept them hidden. Now they were loud and very visible. You’ve abandoned us, they screamed! And I had.

So I took stock. When we really want to make a big change, I think the universe steps in to help. My desire has to be sincere, though.

Each person’s circumstances are vastly different. My way of facing regrets may not align with your particular history or present commitments. I don’t want to make light of anyone’s circumstances. I’m just aware, from my own experience, that amazing gifts have come when (1) I faced up to my regrets and (2) sincerely asked what I could do about them.

It doesn’t have to be cancer or another illness that offers this chance. Whatever gives you the opportunity to look at your life, counts. My questioner experienced it with a book release that felt unsatisfactory.

The point is: at these moments of regret, instead of beating yourself up for what you didn’t accomplish, ask what else you came to do and what stands in your way now.

Second chances backed by the universe

After chemo, I spent a week at a cabin with four women friends. One of them was a artist who painted in soft pastels. Pastels are oil paints in compressed sticks, essentially. In college, I studied art but my medium was oils. They became much too slow for my impatient nature (the drying time), so when this new friend sat me down on the wide cabin porch and opened a box of her soft pastels, I was intrigued. She urged me to pick up one and begin to play on paper.

Bye, bye, the rest of the week. I got lost. I painted everything, I painted nonstop. Pastels felt rich and buttery to my fingers, so fast to work with, expressive in a way I’d never experienced.

Art became my healing therapy. As my hair grew back, as I regained my strength, my life gained a new purpose. I’d asked myself what I came to do, and it was art. But I didn’t like the way I’d used (oils) and I needed a new path. The gift of this new friend, who just happened to be at the retreat week, was a miracle to me.

What safety is holding you back?

Bringing art back to my life required time, space, and some money. It opened me to new communities of artists. I’d forgotten how that fed me. As art came back, I became aware I needed a redo in another area of my life: my writing. A dream I’d never even come close to was to write. fiction.

In secret, I’d crafted a few stories. They were heartfelt and amateur. I knew what good writing was, and I knew I needed help to get my fiction to the point where I’d be proud of it.

Art began to reawaken the possibility that I could be a creative person AND a responsible adult. I also realized that, having faced a life-threatening illness, life was unpredictable. Maybe I needed to act on my dreams now, rather than keep putting them off.

My journalism career was super successful. I worked from home, on my own time. I was paid very well. I wrote every day. I loved the editors I worked with. I loved to cook. My writing had won awards. So why didn’t it spark me anymore?

Because I needed to quit. To hang up my hat. Even though the safest action was to stay in this settled relationship, something else was calling.

Sometimes you have to quit

Crazy to quit a lucrative career, right? Getting paid to be a working writer is a rare thing. I had more book contracts in the wings and a successful weekly syndicated column. But sometimes, you have to let something go to make room for what you really want.

I didn’t rush this. I took five years. I finished my commitments and saved enough money to put myself through grad school without loans. I took side jobs to support myself during the two years of my MFA. I was terrified. But I said yes to the second chance.

I don’t know how long I could’ve held on to what I had, before I had to let go of it for what I really wanted. I tried to be smart and sane, be an adult, but I’m pretty sure the regrets would’ve gotten me sick all over again if I’d ignored the call.

It’s different for everyone. When I graduated with my MFA and my first novel was published in 2009, I felt sure I’d made the right decision. But much of those first two years after I left my stable life behind, I wasn’t sure.

I still love food, I still love to cook. When I think of these big risks I took, the second chances brought by the cancer experience, I feel quite weepy. It all could’ve gone very wrong, but instead it went very right.

How to get a second chance

As I think about the psychology of regret, I see that we’re offered wake-up calls and second chances all the time. I’m not saying everyone has to act on them. Sometimes we’re not ready. Sometimes we have to finish up a commitment or set up good circumstances for change.

But sometimes, too, we stall. We wait for the perfect moment, when there may not be one coming. We feel too much responsibility to others, too little to ourselves. I’ve seen this over and over in my students, my friends, and myself. What holds us back is often simply a choice, a rededication to our creative life.

I was grateful to make a good living as a working writer. But I am in this world to do more than that. I’m here to create, express myself, bring that expression to others. If what I’m doing no longer allows that, I’m heading straight for regrets.

We are not as small as we think

I can’t tell you the number of writers I’ve worked with or taught or spoken with over the years who have adjusted themselves to being small. Pretending it doesn’t hurt to ignore the call of their creative self.

On Laurie’s show (the podcast above), we talked about this. How so many creative dreams go unfulfilled for years until the moment we face our regrets. She spoke of her own dramatic wake-up call. And I talked about mine. But afterwards, I wondered: what if such a dramatic shake up wasn’t required?

If we pay attention to our regrets, they become tiny signposts. Nudges to get us back on track with dreams we care about. Telling us we may need a course correction.

And it’s never too late. Second chances happen at any age and in any circumstance. I was fifty when I made my two radical changes. We’re not too old, too experienced, or too wise for a redo—ever.

Courage

It does take courage. I think the benefit of having an extreme illness or shake up is that is takes away some of the small fears we live with every day, the ones that prevent us from moving forward. I find it’s not the big challenges that really stop us, it’s the small ordinary ones. The habits that make up our identity.

The courage that comes from something radical happening, that flips you around, wipes away many of those smaller, petty fears. Too much is at stake to worry about what your cousin or your sister-in-law thinks of you, when something that big happens. It puts everything into a different perspective.

If you’re inclined, try my exercise of the regrets list. Be prepared for some emotions, but also see if you can perceive your particular pattern. Consider how each of these regrets was a tiny nudge from your creative self, calling you to awaken to your dream.

What are the things in your life that you believe have passed you by, and you’ll always regret not trying, in your life as a writer?

What would it take to reinvent that part of your life so it feels refreshed and fulfilling?

What would give you more freedom to truly express yourself, as completely as you want to?