The Art of Letting Go

I start with a quote from a guy who was wildly brilliant and cross-sector with that brilliance. So I feel like he knows something about art.

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Leonardo da Vinci

Uplifting quote to really warm you up to writing today, right? You know that piece you just finished? The one that took up your heart, soul, and brain space for months?

Time to abandon it!

Okay. Abandon is a big, scary word. And for this writer, not the best fit. Perhaps…transfer its energy. Give it to the community. Time to (and I’m sorry parents) just…let it go.

I struggle with this concept. Calling a writing piece done is a complicated endeavor. How do you know when its done? On the flip side, say you know it’s done – how do you leave it alone?

Intellectually, I know my piece done. It’s gone through a beta reader – usually more than one, it’s spell checked (ten gazillion times) and if I’m brave enough, its even got my mother’s stamp of approval on it.

And yet. I tinker.

During intense quarantine last spring, I picked up a short story I hadn’t touched in literally years and rewrote the entire thing to present tense. Once the tense was switched, I had to find bits that had fallen out of sense and shove them back into formation. The word count got tighter, which is almost always a win, but seriously. Seriously?

Seriously.

I should have been working on my WIP. I could have been washing my hair, getting caught up on overdue tasks at work, or, like, doing dishes occasionally. Rather, I used it as a procrastination tool to skirt around what I should have been doing in that moment.

So how do you stop the tinkering?

• Think about this piece as foundation for what comes NEXT. Let it be the springboard. What did you learn about your voice working on this piece? How can you take it, curate it, and use it again, but in a fresh way?
  • Example: in The Right Kind of Light, my first novel, Lou is a very important character to drive Ginny’s story, but she’s absent from Ginny’s life, so she’s absent from the book. I realized I wanted to know what happened to Lou after The Right Kind of Light; now I’m working on Lou’s response story, of sorts, that takes place the year after my first novel.
• Ask yourself what’s so important about the piece you can’t separate from? Is it a subject matter you’re passionate about? Are you procrastinating starting something new? Is it the burden of perfectionism? (Been THERE.)
  • Example: Back in college, I wrote mostly non-fiction. I was realizing that voice is a crucial part of storytelling, so I tooled around with telling the same stories under the guise of exploring voice. How could I change perspective on a break-up with my first love? What about the time we went fishing under the bridge, or the time that he sat through Easter Sunday with my family or the time we went across the state to visit his family, or the time we …. You get the drift. In reality (and growth and perspective really helped) I figured out that what I was holding on to was him – or my idea of him – and not the act of honing my craft. Realizing that made it much easier for me to move on to fiction + you know, get over him. Details.
• Lock it away. We have WAY too much access to our work. I’ve purposefully never put anything I write on my phone because I fear waking and scrolling in the night. Back up your _final in a local place you’ll always have access to AND on a reliable place online you trust: Dropbox. Google Docs. Put it somewhere you know its unequivocally safe, but somewhere you can’t just move your mouse a half an inch to and click open to check that one sentence at the end of Chapter 4. You know you won’t stop at Chapter 4.
• Read. You’re a writer. You love reading. Read literally anything else. I’ve found that reading sweeps my brain of whatever my writing malfunction is, and almost always either confirms something I’m struggling with, or moves me in an entirely different direction – both of which I’m eternally grateful for.
• Get fresh air. Take a long weekend – and don’t take your computer (that means taking your Dropbox app off your phone too). Go on a hike. Grab your kid and his sled. Look up into the sky and take a deep breath. Life, as we all know, distracts. Let it.

 
Listen, we all know that writing and publishing is never entirely done until the ink is wet. Even then – we live in a digital era. Sometimes there’s no ink at all. I promise you that once I hit post on this blog post, I have the liberty to read it again in a few hours, and if I find something I hate, I’ll change it.

I’m better at letting go than I used to be. Not perfect, not at all. But who is?

Yours in not-yet-abandoned-work,
Stephanie

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