Why Writers Can't Stop Writing....it's the Wheel that keeps on Turning.

Some days, writing feels like madness.

I pour hours into a story that might never see the light of day, chase characters who don’t exist and wrestle with sentences that fight back over and over (just to be erased in the end). But I keep going. I can’t stop. It's the wheel that won't stop turning.

Sometimes I wonder what the hell I’m doing - spending hours of my life writing stories that may have negligible impact on the world.

I’ve considered giving it all up, enrolling in a university degree, pursuing something sensible and neatly credentialed. But I can’t seem to give it up.

It feels like something outside of me is compelling me to keep going. I can almost justify that theory when I think about my Read-Easy books for reluctant, struggling, and infrequent teen readers. That’s an altruistic pursuit, so if something is going to be a little bit divine, surely that would be it… right?

But then there are my other works. The ones written with no hint of altruism. Just pure pleasure.

Right now, I’m working on the second full-length novel I’ve ever written. My first sits quietly on my computer - 100,000 words of sweat and stubbornness - waiting for my second wind and probably its eighteenth rewrite. I must have cut my teeth on that beast, because this time my writing feels different: easy, focused, mostly planned, and so gratifying. I've nearly finished the first draft of this second novel, and I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.

And yet, I still ask: If it comes to nothing, what was the point?

I want this novel to be traditionally published. I want to write the series that follows. I want to be paid for my work. But I also know the numbers, and they’re dire. Between 95% and 99% of manuscripts submitted are poorly written, unoriginal, or irrelevant. Mine will not be in that pile.

Still, the remaining 5%? Most of them get rejected too and not because they’re bad, but because of timing, competing titles, or the state of the market.

I’ve been there. One of my middle-grade novels was seriously considered by two major publishers. They loved it. But it didn’t fit the market. It was devastating. A complement wrapped in a major kick in the guts.

That’s the kind of feedback that can make you want to despair before you even begin.

And yet… I can’t stop. The wheel inside me keeps turning and it's why writers like me, just can't stop writing.

I don’t know why this is the case for me. Maybe I never will. But if I had to answer honestly, I’d say I’m 70% here for the process, for the pure kick of creating something from nothing and 30% because I still, desperately, want to succeed.

The market may be fickle, the odds may be brutal, but the wheel keeps turning, and I’m going to see where it takes me.

A wheel of fire, representing the spark of imagination and the process of continual creation