How to Not Stop Writing

Stop writing.
Give up and don't start again.
Stop doing the thing that makes you crazy and hurts your heart and makes you a misery to be around.
Stop writing.

It's easier to start writing than to stop - that's the way of any addiction, right?
But I'm not going to tell you lies.

I'm not one of those people who have to write. I don't feel that if I didn't write, I'd die.

I'd be fine. I have a job I love and am good at. And I can paint and draw and dance and sing for the pleasure of being creative. Writing is something I choose to do, as hard as it is.

I could stop.

Last year around this time something happened that almost made me stop writing. I failed at something pretty spectacularly. It was, to put it mildly, devastating. And I didn't know if I could recover the blow to my writing ego. Worse, I didn't know if I wanted to. You see, if I stopped writing, all of the negative feelings would go away. I wouldn't be open to failing that way again.

Fast forward to today and I'm writing again, still. I wonder, how did I do it? How did I not stop writing when it would have been so much better for my happiness?

1) Happiness isn't everything.
2) Writing makes me feel new things and scary, amazing things that I have forgotten how to feel.
3) The "What if..." habit is a hard one to break once you pick it up.
4) I have people. Squad. Wonderful, brilliant humans who tell me to shut the f**k up and start writing because THEY want to read the worlds I create.
5) My husband does not take no for an answer when it comes to believing in me. He's a stubborn son of a bitch (sorry, mom-in-law.)

That's how you do it. That's how you keep going. You just do.