I AM NOT QUITTING -- by Jane Kelley

I have no idea why I felt the need to spell out that vow on November 18. Or why it required all caps to stiffen my resolve. I need to remind myself not to quit pretty much every week. Sometimes every day. Every hour. Not every minute, though. That would be pretty counterproductive. Repeating the mantra would fill my brain and make it impossible to keep writing. Which is after all the goal. To keep going no matter how weary we are. Or how people mock our dreams as if we were as mad as Don Quixote.

Bas relief by Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington; poem by Archer M. Huntington -- in the courtyard of the Hispanic Society of America Museum, New York City

So what do we do when we feel like Don Quixote riding his old nag, Rocinante? When chasing the dream has worn us down to skin and bones? Can we summon the energy to lift our head to see where we're going? Does it even matter? We won't get there anyway. 

Wait. Look closer at the inscription. I'll zoom in. 

"Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod than Rocinante stumbling up to God?"

Did that phrase cheer me up? Sometimes it can be inspiring to remember that the act of writing is a noble pursuit. It isn't vanity. Even in Don Quixote's case, his efforts did inspire those around him to remember that life was more than the daily grind. His purpose was to return to the age of chivalry. What is mine?

Back to my journals I go. Why did I want to write this novel in the first place? What inspired me? It surely wasn't the image of myself beating my head against a computer screen for TWO YEARS to write THIRTEEN DRAFTS in hopes of placing the book with a wonderful editor who will ask me to REVISE IT AGAIN and probably AGAIN. 

I've been around a while. I know that writing a novel is at best intermittently fun and mostly frustrating. 

So then why? 

Because I have something I want to communicate. Mostly that something is the importance of persistence. Of keeping at it. Because as Trail Blaze Betty says, "The only way to fail is to quit." And why does she, a character in my first novel, say that? Because I needed to hear it. Again and again. 

Persistence is a common theme of mine. Characters have to keep trying, against odds, in order to get what they want. Because that is true for anyone and anything.

So here is the variation on that theme in my current work in progress. 

Remember -- it isn't FIND your place. It's MAKE your place.

Of course that advice applies to my poor protagonist, whom I am currently making miserable so that she can in the end succeed beyond her wildest dreams. 

It's also a message to me. One doesn't become a writer by stumbling upon a novel that someone else has written but forgot to claim. One becomes a writer by working at it. Even on the bad days. Especially on the bad days. Because that's how you get the job done.

JANE KELLEY is the author of NATURE GIRL, whose heroine accomplished her goal, and the work-in-progress EVA, who is en route. And is NOT QUITTING.