{"id":24684,"date":"2021-10-08T03:00:32","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T10:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/?p=24684"},"modified":"2021-10-05T09:37:48","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T16:37:48","slug":"time-to-quit-by-catharine-bramkamp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/08\/time-to-quit-by-catharine-bramkamp\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to Quit by Catharine Bramkamp"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Time<\/a>Let\u2019s welcome back monthly columnist Catharine Bramkamp<\/a> as she shares with us \u201cTime to Quit.\u201d Enjoy!<\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

Are you slaving away at a project<\/strong>, like a novel, anthology, poetry collection, blog, newsletter, working at 100 miles per hour but making zero progress?<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s time to quit.<\/span><\/p>\n

I know, quitting is synonymous with failing.<\/strong> And failing is bad. That is the short version of very complex emotions that often come from our history (and likely our mothers).<\/span><\/p>\n

Quitters never win, winners never quit.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a lot of baggage that weighs down the very idea of quitting that makes it difficult to even consider<\/strong>. But with the advent of business start ups and the popular mantra to \u201cbreak things quickly,\u201d quitting is having something of a renaissance.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Quitting Renaissance<\/b><\/h2>\n

The first part of this renaissance is the Pivot. Rather than give up on a project completely, we steer a project in a different direction, or we evaluate a project and move forward on just one tantalizing piece of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s one kind of like quitting<\/strong>. But what about the real deal? Full on quitting. Dropping the offending project into the backwaters of a computer hard drive and moving on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our caution about quitting is both emotion and peer influenced.<\/span><\/p>\n

We know the stories about writers who left a novel too soon and failed<\/strong>, and we know the stories of those who never quit and finally\u2014after much excruciating effort\u2014publish that damn manuscript. We know that the professional writer is the amateur who never quits.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there are merits to both pivoting <\/span>and<\/span><\/i>\u00a0just quitting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Galley Slave Versus the Captain<\/b><\/h2>\n

You are the captain of your project.<\/span><\/p>\n

You have the command, and you are in control.<\/strong> You can set whatever course is appropriate for the ship (your whole career).<\/span><\/p>\n

If your current project isn\u2019t heading in the right direction, it doesn\u2019t take much to simply alter the course: The novel that isn\u2019t flowing can be a series of short stories. Perhaps the short-story collection can be re-organized into blog posts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The key point is that there is still potential in your project<\/strong>, and staying the course, even a modified one, is still worth the journey and effort.<\/span><\/p>\n

But maybe you feel like a galley slave consigned to the dark bowels of the ship\u2014rocking, sea sick, and miserable.<\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve lost track of the destination because you can\u2019t see where you\u2019re going<\/strong>. The work is repetitive, mind numbing.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the galley slave isn\u2019t lazy, she is not sitting around the mess hall drinking stale coffee and complaining about her lot in life. She is working as hard as she can.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet she still makes little to no real progress.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Galley slaves start in good faith, but after a few weeks, they realize their mistake. The galley slave is on the wrong boat, headed to the wrong port.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Time to Quit and Jump Ship<\/b><\/h2>\n

That water is cold. How do we <\/span>really<\/span><\/i> know it\u2019s time to jump?<\/span><\/p>\n

While working away on this nowhere project do you:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n