Yes, yes, I know the usual answer. Writers don’t retire. We die with our hands on the keyboard, mid sentence, probably having just typed in a misplaced comma. But do we really?

Dave Drake retired. I’m not sure why, or how but he did. He said he no longer felt the need to write, so he stopped. And Jerry Pournelle retired, not willingly. He said he still had the stories, he just no longer had the words. This, btw, was what happened to me 15 years ago when my thyroid first went tiltawhirl. (Now at least it seems to be in permanent state of decay. Which is easier to treat than now is fine now is not.)

John Ringo thought he was retiring just… seven? years ago. And while those of us who love reading him hoped he wouldn’t, and were overjoyed when his muse hunted him down and whipped him (eh) into shape again, it was never sure.

This morning we had the talk again. You know, the one that goes “Perhaps it’s time I did something more productive with my life.” It’s the first time we had the talk since I quit trad pub, or it quit me. And it seems like a weird time to do it. Or perhaps the perfect one.

Yes, No Man’s Land did better than I expected. But Witch’s Daughter sank so deep it cratered. Yes, okay, guys, I know, Amazon has been playing stupid games (not just) with (my) reviews and tags and placement and whatever the heck, but even my giving away of earcs to substack subscribers was pathetic. NML gave away around 180 per. Witch’s daughter gave…. thirty? And that’s hard to blame on Amazon.

It kind of cut the ground out from under me, and I’ve been walking into walls since.

Then there was the blog fundraiser. No, not emergency, but crimeny cricket, people. I post every day unless my health is being stupid and requiring me to spend so much time with the doctor we should stop meeting that way. I work till midnight on a normal work day, and get up with the blog hanging over me, if I didn’t do it the night before. I’m haunted by a persistent fear of the blank blog. While at a remote ren faire, helping The Little Pickle, she was in shock of how much I do: blog, and writing and administrivia that must be done every day. She classified it as my having three jobs.

And I realize it wasn’t a fundraiser for need — only to the extent that we’re involved in a complex whole-family maneuver that requires us to get another house which costs more and we kind of counted on my normal minimal income. BUT we can figure that out, and I didn’t want people to hurt themselves — but even so.

Looks at ceiling. Let’s say I had more successful fundraisers BEFORE I had fundraisers. Just people randomly donating when they read something they liked.

And I wondered… I always said I would blog while there was a need. Maybe the need is passing?

We had that talk again today. And for the first time in 41 years Dan didn’t say “don’t.” He didn’t say “Wait.” He did say, somewhat apprehensively “Are you going to be impossible to live with?”

I don’t think I am. Not more impossible than I’ve been the least year at least.

So am I retiring?

I don’t know.

Perhaps I’ve entered the phase of life known as playing footsy with retirement, which can go on for a few months, a few days or in my dad’s case 20 years. (He started at about my age.)

The negatives of retiring are as follows: A life of working on my soul (heaven knows it needs it) and cross stitch sounds very restful, but it might be because I’m so tired. I might be bored. The characters are still in my head, I don’t know if playing with them alone is enough. The blog — aka ATH aka the Hoyt home for wayward minds — is as much my emotional support as anything else. I tend to write the most cheery posts when most depressed. This is not a coincidence. Mostly, though, will the sons and the pickles kill me if I JUST devote myself to being mom and wife and house keeper. At least one of the time I quit writing (for two weeks) the kids forced me to go back to work. (They swear I dusted THEM three times a day. This is nonsense. Once at most. They also say they lived in fear I’d throw one of the cats out for not being clean enough. Again, nonsense. Pixie of blessed memory was never clean. I still loved him.)

The cons are more material: I won’t need to stay up late; I can stop reading politics; I can return to my little private life, my little private way (Oh, the idiot stalker won’t go away, probably, but then again, like death and taxes that’s fixed) and stop the splash back on my family and friends; maybe, finally my house will be relatively clean and not an ever growing mess I don’t have time to deal with. I can perhaps write stuff just because it pleases me. Or not. Because if the dogs liked the food we wouldn’t be where we are.

I’m not going to shutter ATH — or here — tomorrow or next month. Enough people donated, and they donated their usual, that I wouldn’t do that to them.

I’ll keep it up till December at least. And I’m going to try to finish Orphans, though something is broken in it and I’m not sure what. Might be five books at least crammed into one. Or maybe I’ve realized that whole thing is not a series so much as a very long book, which is difficult to impossible to write coherently. Who knows? I’m going to try, anyway.

But the question has been asked and not immediately negated. Do writers retire? Should I?

The best part of hitting your head on a stone wall is the relief when you stop. Should I stop?