When I was eight, I got this really cool pink bicycle for my birthday. Though, it would've been so much more awesome if it was blue, but whatever, it had a banana seat and handlebar tassels . Can you say excellent? That bike, despite it's color deficiency was everything I ever wanted in a bike. Man, I was so happy the day I got to take it out and chase my big brothers on their bikes (one of which was blue, I'm not bitter, that is just really my favorite color, like a lot). As time went on, my confidence grew and grew until I was ready to take on the BIG hill in our neighborhood all by myself. I peddled hard up to the top and turned around to look down at my house near the dip before the smaller hill. That day, I'd have said any people walking around my driveway looked like ants from the top of that hill. Today, I know that they are actually ant and that's why they look like that, but not when I was eight.
That day, I put my foot on the peddles, adjusted my blue helmet, and gritted my teeth as I pushed off. The wind rushed past my face. I peddled until the movement was meaningless because I was flying so fast down the sidewalk. And all of the sudden, really fast was too fast and I wanted to bail off of that bike. It's a good thing I learned to us my pedals as breaks. Anyone who has ever had a bike that stops like that can guess what happened next. I pressed back on the pedal and stopped, again, too fast.
Now, there was no dramatic flip over the front of the handlebars or veering off into the street. My face collided with the chrome chipping one of my front teeth and inflicting a fat lip on my face in the process. The bike and I fell sideways into my driveway with the ants that were just ants and I cried until my parents came out to get me. It didn't take them long, Dad was in the garage and scooped me up while Mom got me fixed up. I have no idea exactly what happened after that, but I can tell you what didn't happen: I didn't get back on my bike and ride off. Quite the opposite, I quit. I refused to get on that bike or any other bike at all. I have stubbornly and fully quit with bikes at the ripe old age of eight. Or so I thought.
A few years later, when I was eleven or twelve, I spent a lot of time at my friend's house and she always wanted to ride bikes. She knew well and good that I wouldn't ride, but that was no issue because I made sure to take my roller skates so she could bike and I could keep up, sort of. This was the eighties, there were no roller blades, only the four wheel kind. Still, we were best friends and we made it work. Her neighborhood, unlike mine, was flat and that helped a lot. Many of our other friends lived around the area too and we were soon a group of six with five on bikes and me on my skates. The other friends weren't as accommodating as my BFF and soon I was busy fending off questions of why I wouldn't ride a bike, but skates were fine.
Peer pressure is quite a thing, because it really didn't take that long for me to admit I was scared to fall off. Talk about testimonials, I was fast surrounded by other kids showing me their scars from when they fell off their bikes and got back on. Amidst so much evidence it was possible to survive more than one bike crash, they took apart all of my arguments about how I was scared and dared me to just try it. One look at each of their bikes and they all looked like ten-foot-high death traps. I rolled backwards on my skates and bumped into the curb hard enough to fall on my butt. Sitting down hard, I got back up. It was simple. I just stood and I was back on my feet.
Have I mentioned yet how much I loved my best friend? Well, she just happened to remember that she still had her old bike in her garage. It was small, close to the ground and beat up. That little red beast was the farthest thing from cool and the seat... Well, after about two minutes on it, the bike got a name: Crotch Cruncher. I might be a girl, but that bike was not comfortable, and it didn't matter at all. Closer to the ground than I was wearing my skates, I took off on Crotch Cruncher and followed the others on their appropriately-sized bikes and we were off around the neighborhood, all of us on bikes.
I rode that thing for most of the summer before I finally admitted to my parents that I'd quit quitting on bicycles. One day when they came to pick me up, I got on Crotch Cruncher and showed them that I could ride again. Of course, I asked for a new bicycle because the pink one that hurt my face and caused all the dental bills was far too small for me. It was clearly the coolest bike a little girl could want, but now that I was big, I needed a blue one. They shared that look that tells every kid everywhere that whatever they've asked for is never going to happen. Only, I did get a blue bike. You see, my older bother was far too big for his and in need of a new one, so I ended up with that awesome blue bike I used to chase around on my pink one and I was the happiest not so little girl ever once I quit quitting.
All of that is to illustrate that just because you quit something once doesn't mean that you can't quit quitting it. If I was a quitter, I'd never finish a book. That doesn't mean that I don't have a file with started and stalled ideas that just haven't panned out yet, because I do. The craziest thing is, that file used to be a lot bigger than it is at the moment. You know why? Much like back when I was surrounded with kids with scars from falling off bikes, I am surrounded by author friends and one very important person, my agent, Jessica Schmeidler, who tell me I can do this writing thing and I don't totally suck at it. There are still so many days that I'm just waiting to fall off of my writing bike and sit in the driveway crying with a chipped tooth and a fat lip, but this time, I know once I dry my tears and maybe clean up some of the blood, I'm back on that bike, be it pink or blue or cool or painful, and I'll ride off, by which I really mean keep writing.
You know why? Quitting hurt a lot more than the flesh wounds. I had to construct an entire plan around my quitting just so I wouldn't be left behind. That took a crazy amount of planning and understanding by everyone around me. I'm really glad I learned to quit quitting. It is so much more rewarding than quitting in the first place.