on quitting

I've been thinking a lot lately about quitting. Not me, quitting, I mean about the concept of quitting writing in general. It seems to be very common with the writers I know to at some point throw up one's hands and declare they're going to quit. I myself have done so, elsewhere in this blog. It seems to happen to others shortly after one too many rejection slips from publishers and/or agents. It happens to me when I read back over a bad day's work.

However, the next day, there I am again, writing something. So I tried to imagine what 'quitting writing' would look like, and I realized that it just doesn't make any sense. I mean, I can see never submitting anything again for publication, but actually ceasing to put my thoughts into words and the words onto 'paper' (apologies to this virtual location) -- for me, that seems about as possible as stopping my hair from growing. Does not make sense. Does not compute.

I guess I should admit up front that I never 'started' writing -- that is, as soon as my hands were developed enough to hold an implement, I was making marks on things, which gradually turned to words, which gradually became 'writing.' How do you 'quit' that? It would be like un-learning to read, as far as I'm concerned.

When I was in art school about a million years ago, there was an infamous list of questions from the sculptor David Smith that everybody thought was The Shit. We all went around trying to out-do each other with how Committed we were to Our Art. I will bet any amount of money that the most 'committed' of those students is now a celebutante or reality show star, without a thought for His or Her Art, because it's really just so much self-aggrandizing bullshit to say 'art is my life.' I'm talking about something smaller here -- something much simpler. Putting things into words on paper gives me pleasure, so I do it frequently. I can't envision anything that would make me stop doing that, not because 'it's my life' or something equally dramatic, but for the simple fact that I like doing it. I do hope to be published (hopefully within the next six years), but lack of publication won't make me stop writing any more than lack of a movie contract will make me stop talking.

However, I've been told, by people who know me well enough to say it, that I tend to erroneously assume other people are all exactly like me. So I'm curious: if there's anything in the world that would make you stop writing (as opposed to 'writing'), what is it? How do you think it would affect you, if you were to stop?