I watched a Netflix show I like very much, a bittersweet comedy called Louie, the show is funny but also not funny, it captures real life in a powerful way sometimes. It is much too honest to every appear on the commercial sanitized networks, but creativity live on the edges.

In the show, Louie, the comedian quit a job working the lounge at the Trump Casino in Atlantic City, he had violated a contract promise not to denigrate gambling or make fun of Donald Trump, and he violated both and was fired. Given the choice of behaving or quitting, he decided to quit.

Wandering the casino, he ran into the late Joan Rivers, who was performing his comedy act on the casino’s big stage. The two met, and she invited him up to her suite. He told her that he quit, and she told him in a very direct, even impassioned way, “Don’t Quit. You can’t quit.”

There are ups and downs in the creative life, she said, sometimes you are up, sometimes down, sometime bankrupt, sometimes flush, sometimes popular, sometimes not.  Sometimes you are forgotten, sometimes in the light. But we never quit, she said, this is not a job, it’s a calling. Don’t ever quit.

This exchange affected me in a very personal and powerful way, because it is just what I would have told Louie, or any young writer or artist or person seeking a creative life, a calling rather than a  job. Parents always tell me they tell young writers and artists in their families to get a day job, and this always makes me sad, because people with day jobs very rarely get to pursue their adventure. It is too easy to quit, and once you quit, it is not always easy to come back and give up the things you have acquired.

No one who lives a creative life ever feels secure or really safe, not in our country, that is the toll paid for a meaningful life.

The reason is that the creative life, while wonderful, is hard. And given comfortable and secure options, it is hard not to take them. Every time I stumbled or fell, every time I was down, every time I thought I was over, or had been pushed aside or forgotten, I gave myself the same speech Joan Rivers gave Louie. Don’t quit, don’t ever quit.

When I get angry, or feel badly treated, or dismissed, I want to quit. Don’t quit, I tell myself, even though it took me some time to learn that.

No matter what they do to you, or say about you, no matter how many times you are broke or frightened or feel that you are done, don’t quit. Don’t ever quit. My career as a writer has taken almost every imaginable turn. I have been a best-selling New York Times author five times, been shunted aside by a publisher, rejected by editors, seen bankruptcy and despair, been dismissed by critics, praised by others, in and out up and down.

Two years ago, I was convinced I would never write a book again. My life-long publisher, now thoroughly corporatized,  had abandoned me and my work.

I will write a book again. I have a book coming out next Spring, another idea awaiting approval. I am not done, I am not ever done. And I did not quit. If you seek a creative life, then Joan Rivers is absolutely correct.

Those of us who choose this kind of life do what we do because we love it, and we cannot really do anything else. It is a calling, not a job, we are often called upon to be discouraged, to be more secure, to live a saner and more rational life. We lick our wounds, swallow our pride sometimes, get hurt, feel used, rake ourselves with self-doubt,  but we don’t quit. That is what I have learned.

When I was eight years old, a voice inside of me told me I wanted to be a writer and needed to be a writer.  Sixty years later, I am a writer and that is my life and my calling, and I will never quit, not while one single person will read a word that I write.
And even if there are none.