Why You Should NEVER Stop Writing

A Vulnerable Story for Poets & Writers

I’ve wrestled with doubt, writer’s block, and imposter syndrome for years—wondering if I’m a “real” writer. I’ve published books, studied poetry, performed at events, served as a Poet Laureate in Malibu… and yet the feeling lingers.

But recently, while reading a book called The History of Alchemy: Influences of Culture, Science, and Society, something clicked. It reminded me why I fell in love with history and poetry in the first place—and why I still write.

If you want to watch this story told in a 16-minute video on The Poetry Vessel with Nathan Hassall YouTube Video, click the video box below.

In school, I had two teachers who saw me. One was a maths teacher who helped me climb from a projected U (ungraded, the American equivalent to an F) to a B.

The other was my history teacher—who we’ll call Mr. Smoke, a skinny, nerdy man with disheveled hair and wire-rim glasses. He loved Star Wars, once told us he tried to woo a girl by threading wet spaghetti through his nose.

We had fun with Mr. Smoke. We’d make up rumors about him outside class, then send in students to ask if they were true. “Sir, I heard you fell in love with a pigeon after it s**t on you.” He’d laugh, play along for five minutes, then calmly tell us to settle down. And we would. Because he respected us, and in return, we respected him.

Mr. Smoke died in a car accident some years after I left school. But he influenced my decision to study history at university in the UK. There, I fell in love with medical history—spurred on by my mum’s wild stories from her days as a nurse manager: zoo snakes biting through the shoulder of a young man who stole them, a fence post going through a kid’s hips and out near the collarbone (missing every vital organ).

I took a class called Marvels, Monsters, and Freaks, studied Victorian asylums, wartime prosthetics, and wrote my dissertation on lobotomies in Britain during the 50s and 60s. One man had his frontal lobes severed to cure a gambling addiction. Court-ordered. These were dark stories—but I was riveted.

During uni, I started writing poems seriously—self-published three poetry books before I’d even graduated. I wasn’t afraid then. I just did it. Sold 100+ of each, handed them out on Facebook. I didn’t care what people thought. I just wanted the work to be read.

After uni, I went back to the village pub where I’d been working, became the manager. But the poems didn’t stop. I applied to grad school for Creative Writing – Poetry. I hadn’t felt satisfied with my undergrad experience. I drank too much, spent too much time in a depressive haze. I needed to redeem it. When Kent accepted me, I went back.

I was terrified to start. I didn’t know what enjambment meant. I wasn’t steeped in the classics. I’d gotten a D in English Literature at school. But I knew I loved poetry, and I was ready to learn. I was well-read in psychology, neuroscience, and more—and had written poems from experience, if not yet with a full understanding of form.

I graduated with a distinction. I was proud, and I thought I was ready to take on the poetry world by storm. A month or so after, I was invited to read at an event where I was paired up with a scientist, being offered £600. This was a very good rate for someone who spent most of his life getting paid minimum wage (or 1 pound 30 over minimum wage when I was a pub manager — a story for another time). For this event, we wrote a collection poem about our chromosomal ancestors, Adam and Eve. After I was paid, I thought, This is it. Poetry career unlocked.

Then I moved to the US to live with Rachael. I wrote a chapbook about grief and friendship, about a close friend who died just before I left—one I still want to publish. But after that, my writing went stale. I refound a marijuana habit which dulled me. My energy dropped. Output was low. Discipline, worse.

About a year in, I decided to change. I started reading like a man possessed. Poetry collections. Books on poetics. Creative process. Neuropsychology. Myth. Poetry finally became part of my living, breathing self. In 2023, I applied to be Poet Laureate of Malibu, to which I was voted in. I’ve read at events, published poems, kept writing, made videos, and done everything I can for the poetry world. And yet…

Still no traditionally published poetry book.

Poem after poem, manuscript after manuscript, edited and reworked with poet friends, with my wife. And still, when people ask if I have a book out, I say: Not yet. Soon.

It hurts.

Because deep down, I’m proud of what I’ve done so far, but not so much because I haven’t achieved that milestone so close to my 35th birthday, a full 18 years after I started writing.

I know I’m a good poet. But the old inferiority creeps in. That “D” in English. That pub job of pulling pints instead of verses. That feeling of not knowing the “right” things. And now here I am—running a YouTube channel about poetry (The Poetry Vessel), writing essays, teaching poetry online—and I still haven’t reached that milestone.

That feeling only intensified recently. My wife and I were on a long-awaited East Coast road trip. In New Hampshire, a massive gas truck drifted halfway into our lane—the driver clearly asleep or distracted. We came inches from death. Somehow, we made it. Not today, Death. But it rattled something loose.

I thought back to my younger self. Fearless. Self-publishing. Pushing forward. Doing all the different things with a youthful bravado tinged with some awkward but necessary arrogance.

And now, I feel like I’m stuck between self-doubt and all the things I know I’ve done well. And the poetry world doesn’t help. It’s slow. Cold. Competitive. You wait 12 months to hear back from a contest where 10,000 other poets submitted.

And still—amid all this frustration—I keep going.

Reading about the history of alchemy has reminded me: this is a process. A poetic one. The art and science of language. The failed experiments. The small transmutations. The gradual change into chemistry. Like the alchemist, the poet tries again and again to mix the right ingredients—rhythm, syntax, breath, longing, word choice—and sometimes we make gold. Sometimes we fall. Sometimes we get back up.

And yes, I still carry that doubt. But I also carry history. My own. The stories, the teachers, the books, the fear, the late nights, the not-yet-published manuscripts, the stubborn spark that says: Screw it. I’m doing it anyway.

Maybe I’ll self-publish again. Maybe a press will take a shot. Either way, I’m not waiting for permission anymore. The naysayers will neigh—like strange horses in ivory stables. But the yay-sayers? They’ll be out in the wild fields with me, stomping around in the dirt.

And if you’ve read this far, you’ve probably felt it too. That doubt. That ache. That whisper that says: maybe I’ll never make it. Maybe I don’t belong. But you do. Keep going. Whether you’ve published zero books or twenty. You’re here. You’re still writing.

Rest in peace, Mr. Smoke.