Quitting is an Option I Refuse to Take

Whether you Fall

The saying "Failure is Not an Option" is not correct.  Failure is most definitely an option.  It's always an option, and will always be an option.  The question is, do you take what behind door number 1 or do you wait for the big prize?  As I sit here, thinking about the novel and how far I have to go to finish the first draft (not far at all), I then realize just how much work I have remaining.  There will be things like editting, the cover designs, structuring the business, so on and so forth, it all just makes me feel... tired.  Tired of the entire endeavor.  Tired of getting up in the morning, getting on the subway and writing.  Going to lunch and scarfing down a meal and writing.  Going to the gym and then back on the subway to drag myself home, and writing.  Although I enjoy the process at times, it all seems so endless.

Just quit.  That's an option.  Many other writers do and have done just that.  They stop before they even get started or they stop after they get started realizing they aren't the best writer the world has ever seen or  finally they stop because they don't see a future it in.  So why do I continue?  The odds are certainly against me.  Yet I continue, day in and day out, writing in crowded subways and on grease countertops.  Even when I'm exhausted the laptop comes out on it's own, opens the file and demands I continue onward.  I think I've even heard a whip crack in the background a few times.

So why?  I can only guess it's love.

Not the love that poets write about of couse.  Not the selfless love that will whatever it must for the those it offers itself to.  Certainly not the perfect Biblical love that is so often spoken about my spiritual leaders.  It's more like a selfish self-serving love that ties my heart to this book.  A love that refuses to say "I can't do this."  A love for my own self respect because I purposefully told so many people what I was doing (can't back out now!).  For my own sense of personal power, because what kind of man quits just because it got a little hard?  A love for me. 

Sure I'd like to make a powerful statement, something that can change the world.  But the most meaningful statement I can make is.... I've changed myself.