I ask because in the last two years I've encountered three writers at some stage of giving up: one who already had, one who was going to quit as soon as she finished the project she was working on, and another who seemed to have decided right then: done! Each of these writers, at the time of their entrance to Hughes' barren field of dead dreams, was somewhere around forty years old. Yesterday, I happened upon a relationship advice website (never mind how I got there) started by a man who, he writes on his "about" page, used to be a screenwriter, but after being ignored by former workshop colleague Matt Damon and having little luck, otherwise, he "didn't want to be that 40-year-old guy trying to sell a screenplay." So he moved on to relationship advice. He's still writing--the website offers advice by way of blog entries--so he hasn't completely quit, but as someone who's written news articles, feature stories, and fiction, I'm pretty sure writing relationship advice would be nothing at all like making up and shaping an original story. 
When deciding to give up creative pursuits, how often is it the death of interest and how often is it an acceptance of failure? Because, obviously, people fail. Even if they try really, really, really hard, are smart and attractive, and sparkle like a Katy Perry firework. Not everyone can succeed. Just the way it is. Is it cowardly, weak, to give up if the assumption is continued failure? Or is it rational? Courageous? Hard common sense? I've been thinking about the quitting thing, lately (in a casual, "huh" way). It generates a lot of questions.
- What does one do when one quits?
- Why does wanting to quit seem to happen to people at 40-ish? A 102-year-old woman just danced in the White House--surely 40-ish can't be too old to hope to achieve something of creative value in the coming two or three decades of reasonably anticipated physical and mental soundness.
- Aren't ideas bound to get only more interesting and complex as experiences and interactions continue to add up?
- How many years of trying equals too many? Do people who start late seem to succeed quickly because they're freshly optimistic and therefore creatively confident rather than beaten down and insecure and tired as all hell of trying to sell?
- What does one do when one quits?
Is it possible to wipe clean the need to succeed and return to the early, simple joys of creating, or is the failure to achieve X after Y years too powerful to overcome? I'm interested to know if others have thought of quitting, whether they quit, why or why not, and how it all turned out.