Why Writers Quit part 2

You can always put on your coat and walk away

If you’d like to read part 1 first, here it is.

When I first moved to Toronto from Montreal at the age of 21, I had several jobs that I would quit whenever I felt like it. Customer service jobs were plentiful and I was thin, blonde, friendly, and compliant, and thus, could get most jobs I applied for. I usually had to have more than one at a time, and also student loans, to get by. I quit all the time. One time I quit working in a store because I “had a free ride to Montreal” for a party. Other times I quit because of my undiagnosed and untreated anxiety disorders. I sound like someone with a safety net, but I was not. I was just impulsive and nihilistic and honestly a bit stupid and selfish. (One of those qualities - impulsiveness, definitely - has helped my creative career.)

My first job in Toronto was as a door to door canvasser for a charity called Feed the Children. Then I worked in a bunch of different stores and restaurants. One involved wearing an Elmo costume and holding a sign for a discount clothing warehouse. Others were very 1990s third wave feminism, if you catch my drift. Then I did what we all did back then - worked as a telemarketer. I’m pretty sure this job doesn’t exist anymore, given how many robot voices call my cell. I imagine that the equivalent job now is delivering for Door Dash. One day I was just having an intolerable day. After someone hung up on you, which they always did, you had to pick the phone up again and keep calling. I felt like my skin was on fire. I started to cry. I would pretend to be a smoker so that I could go outside and stand at the corner of Yonge & Eglinton for five minutes. Never have five minutes felt so fast and so free. Inside, at my desk, after lingering in the elevator as long as possible, I picked up the receiver again. It felt heavy and metaphorical. I turned to my friend beside me and she said, you know you could totally just quit. Just put on your coat and walk away.

Ever since then it’s been a consolation phrase / inside joke with my friend, whenever I want OUT. I could just put on my coat and walk away, I would say about a situationship’s end. Or a weird meeting with a publisher. Knowing that the exit button always exists, even if you grow up and know that you can’t possibly push it without risking homelessness, the fact that I could makes me feel calm for a minute or two. This could indeed all be over.

When I was doing my MFA a friend was comforted by the fact that a mentor had told her, you might just write one book and that will be it. And that’s fine. That gave my friend a great feeling of relief. But it made no sense to me at the time. Why do it, if you’re going to give up? This is all I’ve ever wanted to do? I was 30, had published two books of poetry, one novel, and edited an anthology of short fiction. I had very specific goals, about publishers and editors that I wanted to work with, about forms I wanted to tackle and perfect. I didn’t just want to write one novel, I wanted to write many novels, hopefully each one a little better than the last.

Around that same time I heard two bits of literary gossip.