Learning to Let Go

When you fall in love with anything, letting go is always the hardest thing to do. We hang on, try to look for another way, and expend enormous amounts of energy over a lost cause. The result is usually always crushing. This happens not only in relationships, but also in writing.

In my post Playing to the Crowd, I had originally written many examples of ways to turn off an audience. I loved the idea, and thought it would be great, but it didn't want to blend with my writing. I reworked and reworked my piece, but nothing would give. If I wanted to keep my idea, I knew I would have to write an essay to make it work. That wasn't acceptable, but neither was losing my beloved content. My struggle was heart wrenching, and in the end, I threw it all out and wrapped up my piece quickly not wanting to deal with it anymore.

My mistake was letting my fear of losing my content get in the way of my writing.

When faced with a dilemma such as mine you have to ask yourself a philosophical question: is one catchy sentence or phrase in a paragraph worth more than the sum of that paragraphs parts? If so, then your writing must revolve around that sentence or phrase. If not, then you must either change it or get rid of it completely. It's simple in idea, but in practice it may be harder than you think. Why? Because, letting go is sometimes the hardest thing to do.

When we let go of a piece of content, we sometimes fear we will never see it again, which is not exactly true. In writing, what we reject, can be save for later. Perhaps it didn’t work out in this piece, but it may become pivotal in another. We can even choose to write a whole piece around it at a later time.

The most important thing to remember is, in writing, letting go is not forever.