When to give up?

Nobody ever said it would be easy. Nobody ever said it was always going to be fun. Nobody promised me that after spending twenty-plus years holed up in my office writing novels that anyone would ever read them. Nobody promised me anything would ever come of my writing and yet I still do it. Day after day, year after year, I sit in front of this keyboard and tap out the characters and worlds inside my mind. To date, I think I have more than sixty unique, fully-fleshed characters in all twelve of my novels. In my books, I’ve been to other planets, experienced other dimensions, felt unimaginable loss, murdered, loved, hated, been promiscuous; I’ve done just about everything I’ve always wanted to do without ever leaving this room. And yet, nobody ever promised me that anything would ever come of this “hobby”. Did I ever think of giving up? If you’re a real writer than the answer is of course, most certainly not! Telling a writer to give up and stop the craft is like telling a person with the most cataclysmic bout of diarrhea to stop pooping (thank you Stephen King for that analogy). There is no giving up and there is no stopping an artist with the drive to create. If the digital revolution had never happened and I never had made a dime off of my books would I still be spending hour after hour day after day in front of my keyboard? Absolutely! Writing is a habit I can’t stop and I don’t know any other way to live my life. For more than two decades I have not given up and have not stopped writing and as a result this week I sold over 150 books in five countries and samples and promo’s have been downloaded more than 4,000 times. None of this would have ever happen if I had just taken the easy route and given up. Never!