So, there was a day—not too long ago—when I genuinely considered quitting writing. Like, for real. Not the dramatic “I’ll never do this again!” kind of moment, but the quiet, heavy kind. The kind that settles into your bones. The kind you don’t say out loud, because saying it would make it true.
I had opened my laptop and stared at the screen for a solid hour. Typed a few words. Deleted them. Typed something else. Deleted that too. Then I just sat there, arms crossed, blinking into the void of the blinking cursor. That thing is a menace, by the way. Judgy little stick flashing at you like, “You good, sis?”
I wasn’t.
That day, I felt like I had nothing left to say. Or rather, I had things to say but didn’t trust myself to say them well. That’s the difference. It’s not the blank page that scares me—it’s the fear of not doing justice to the thing I care about. The story I want to tell. The person I want to honour. The truth I’m not sure I can shape without softening it too much… or slicing too deep.
So yeah. I almost quit. Not in a meltdown way. Just… quietly. Neatly. I thought maybe I could bow out gracefully, stop trying, and redirect all that creative energy into something else. Something less… exposing.
But then, something unexpected happened.
I got a voice note from a friend. She was laughing about a line I’d written in something ages ago. It was a throwaway line—nothing special. But it stayed with her. And in that moment, I remembered what writing can do. Not in the grand, earth-shifting sense. But in the small ways. A sentence that stays. A line that lets someone exhale. A story that makes someone feel a little less weird, a little more seen.
That was enough to keep me from quitting.
Barely, but still.
So I didn’t write anything amazing that day. I didn’t suddenly get a brilliant idea or complete a half-done draft. I just showed up again the next morning. And the one after that. And I started learning that the practice of writing—especially on the days when it feels pointless—is what makes you a writer.
Not the accolades. Not the perfect sentence. Not even the finished work.
Just the showing up.
And so here I am, still showing up. Still not always knowing what I’m doing. Still hoping that something I write—maybe even this—will land where it needs to.
