Diary #1: Quitting is the Secret to Success

Sometimes, you just have to walk away from a project

Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

This is Part 1 of the Behind-the-Scenes Diary for my new book, One Year Ago in Spain

Hello, Protagonists!

My next book, One Year Ago in Spain, only exists because I am a quitter.

What??

Yep. I had signed a book deal for a different novel, called Whimsy. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it to work.

So I asked my editor if I could throw it in the trash and write another book instead. (More on that in a bit.)

Folding Early

Championship poker players fold 80% of their hands, according to Annie Duke. She should know, because she is a championship poker player, as well as a behavioral psychologist who wrote a book called Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away.

The reason some poker players become big winners is because they know how to walk away early. Often they fold right away, but they’ll even quit when they’ve invested significant time in the game.

That’s a problem that a lot of writers and artists have. We get an idea that starts out great (think of this as the first cards you’re dealt in poker), but then as we begin writing, we start to have some trouble with the plot or the characters. Unsure of whether it’s something we can work our way out of or not, we decide to stick with it through the bitter end, because we’ve already put so much blood and sweat and time into it.

Sometimes, you really do just need to tough it out. Writing and creating art is not easy; books and paintings and sculptures do not appear out of thin air, perfectly formed. You have to do the work.

But sometimes, you’d be better off folding. And yet we’re hesitant to, because we’ve been trained from a young age with the mantra that quitting is bad, quitting is for losers, quitters never win.

Except that’s not true at all. Quitters do win.

Making Space for The Win

Now, about that book, Whimsy. Some of you have heard about this one before, so the quick rundown is that I'd been working on Whimsy for three or four years, off and on. It never quite worked, so I’d steal pieces of it to put into other books. But I would always come back to the idea.

I had signed a two-book contract with my publisher (Del Rey, part of Penguin Random House). The Hundred Loves of Juliet was the first book. Whimsy was supposed to be the second.

But when I turned in a draft of Whimsy to my editor, she came back with this feedback: “There’s something missing from this story, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

You could have heard my sigh from the other side of the universe. Because I also knew there was something missing from Whimsy—it had been missing for years—and I didn’t know how to fix it, either.

This was the crossroads.

I could have kept hammering at Whimsy. My editor was game to try, because she believed in the core story.

But I knew it was time to fold. Honestly, I think I knew before I even sent it to her.

It takes bravery to walk away from a project, especially when you’ve worked on it—and loved it—for years.

Yet quitting is sometimes the best solution, because when you finally let go and free up mental space, something new and even more beautiful can bloom in its place.

Soon after, my new book idea hit me—no—completely walloped me:

While on a trip to Spain, a woman’s fiancé falls into a coma, and when his soul wanders off, she’s the only one who can see him. His soul doesn’t remember her, but she has to make him fall in love with her to reconnect him to reality and his body. It’s the only way they can actually have a happily ever after.

I wrote One Year Ago in Spain in a rapid blur. The whole story tumbled out of me and onto my computer in a matter of weeks. When I turned it in to my editor, she loved it immediately. We didn’t even have to change very much to get it into shape for publication (rare!!)

Maybe some day I’ll go back to Whimsy. But right now, I’m really glad I took that brave step away and said goodbye.

How Do You Know When to Quit?

With poker, it’s a little easier to know when to fold, because you can do the math.

With art, it’s harder—it’s impossible to know for sure if your project is a dud.

So unfortunately, I don’t have a cut and dried answer for you, and I suspect it would be different for each person anyway. For me, time and experience have taught me when to walk away from a book idea, and even then, I probably still linger longer than I should.

The best piece of advice I can give is that you should allow yourself the possibility of quitting. Letting go of a project isn’t failure; sometimes, it’s just part of your path to get to the next thing that is your destiny.

Tell us: How do you know when you should quit something?

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Want to learn more about this?

I linked to Annie Duke’s book above, but if you prefer listening, here she is on Freakonomics Radio Network, talking about why quitting is so hard, how to do it sooner, and why we feel shame when we do something that’s good for us:

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Pre-order my next book, One Year Ago in Spain, from either Meet Cute Bookshop or The Ripped Bodice, and you’ll get the paperback book +

• an exclusive art print of Matías painting Claire with honey and crushed berries (illustration by the talented Sally Pham)

• a custom designed One Year Ago in Spain bookplate, autographed by me

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