7 Do you ever have one of those really discouraging days where you just feel like quitting poetry altogether? I’m having one of those days. I’m thinking of giving up poetry and maybe taking up something useful, like restaurant hostessing.
Jeannine Hall Gailey is a writer with MS who served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and is the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize, Field Guide to the End of the World, and the upcoming Flare, Corona from BOA Editions. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Ploughshares.
Suzanne
Yes.
Stick with poetry, restaurant hostessing isn’t as glamorous as it appears — trust me on this one.
(((HUG)))
xo
Collin
I’ve given up poetry more times than I can count. It will pass. I hosted at a restaurant for a summer about seven years ago and it was THE worst job I’ve ever had.
C. Dale
Yes. I would be surprised to hear someone say they never felt discouraged. All I have to do is read Donne or Keats and I feel discouraged. As Collin says, It will pass.
Yokel (TKS)
Yes, that happened quite a while ago for me and I went back to my first love, writing fiction. Short fiction hasn’t been any more encouraging, though, so now I’m working on novels and nonfiction.
Everyone gets discouraged; it doesn’t help that today’s economics force us to think beyond what we love (like poetry) toward what pays the bills.
Maybe I’ll go back to poetry. Maybe not. It’s never been as gratifying for me as prose. The main thing, Jeannine, is to keep writing what you love. That, I have always done.
Tamara
Anne
Been there. But stick with the poetry — shiny platform sandals and restaurant hostessing don’t play nicely together, plus you’re a darn good poet. 🙂
jeannine
Thanks you guys. I guess I have happy memories of restaurant hostessing – probably because I was a teenager then…
I just had some disappointing news about a project I had worked really hard on being killed. So that led to the discouragement. Hopefully good news waits for me out there sometime…
Peter
Hang in there J9! When I feel like that I try to get outside of myself for a while, in to nature, in to the world. Take a walk. Look at the sky. Another opportunity will come to you.