What do you do when frustration with a story goes beyond writer’s block, when you decide that something fundamental in a story isn’t working? When you’ve gone back and tried to reevaluate and find a fix, and it still isn’t coming together? When do you decide that enough is enough? When do you decide to let go?
For the past six months, I’ve been working with short story and picture book writer Jack Wong in a self-editing mentorship funded through Arts Nova Scotia. We go through every step of the editorial process together, from developmental edits all the way through copyediting. Together, we’ve figured out ways to overcome story obstacles, create meaningful story conflict, and so much more.
As Jack and I worked on our final story of 2021, we found ourselves coming back, over and over, to a few central, essential questions were holding the story back from where it needed to be. Until, ultimately, Jack came to me and said that the story just wasn’t working—that he was ready to let it go.
My first blog post of 2022 seems like an excellent time to explore what it means to let go of a project that is holding you back. I asked Jack to share his thoughts on choosing to let go of this story, and he graciously shared his thoughts, which I am now able to share with you.
When did you decide that this story wasn’t working?
To give a bit of context: This was the third story that I brought to our short story editing workshop. It felt like the process of the first two stories we edited together played out quite differently from each other. Though each piece felt like it could be almost complete as a story when I first presented it, developmental editing for one seemed to be about refining and finding places to elaborate, while for the other it felt like we were actually discovering and moulding the story through the process. (The end result was much different—and about three times as long—as the first draft.) Through that experience, I came to see “developmental editing” as a more malleable concept, and to expect the manuscript to change for the better through the process.
With that in mind, I decided to submit a new story that I knew wasn’t well-determined yet. I had a premise (a boy who lives in a boarding house run by his mother) and a central plot point (everything changes when a boarder plays a piece on the accordion, and the identity of that piece becomes a mystery that persists through the protagonist’s adulthood), but no satisfying third act. I went into our editing process feeling confident nonetheless, based on the experience of the first two stories, that the unknowns would work themselves out, and that that might be the whole point of developmental editing! A few long discussions, three outlines with different endings, and two divergent second drafts later, I spent a morning staring desperately at the various Word documents (I was due to deliver a third version to [Molly] that afternoon) before admitting to myself that I did not believe in the central plot point of the story.
How did you feel when deciding to set the story aside?
Immediate relief—I was wringing my hands with the decision, but as soon as I committed to setting the story aside, I knew it was the right one.
What was difficult about letting the story go?
It wasn’t frustrating per se, but I felt that working in a “public” forum (our workshop) did factor into my feeling the need to push ahead with the story for as long as I did (though, to be clear, it only contributed to an existing internal set of expectations—see below). Like a deadline for an assignment, this can certainly be a productive pressure—I felt I wouldn’t have discovered the story in the second piece we worked on if not for the environment we created—so it was initially frustrating (disappointing) that the same process didn’t bear the same fruit.
As a writer, how do you choose whether to push through frustration or to accept that a story isn’t working and let it go?
In the days leading up to abandoning the story, the question that dogged me was: What lesson am I supposed to be learning from this situation? I felt a lot of doubt about whether I was reading the situation correctly. Was I supposed to be learning that you should push through a writing block, that the end result will prove there’s always a solution to a difficult artistic problem? Or was I supposed to be learning not to force a story when it wasn’t working—more bluntly, was the situation testing whether I was intuitive enough and clear-eyed enough to recognize a dead end when I see one, and not exhaust my creative energy any further?
I tend to believe that we always know deep down what we really want, and even occasionally coach my friends through hard decisions. (I like to say, “Pretend to put your decision in the hands of someone else—your gut reaction when you hear their answer will tell you everything you need to know.”) My gut reaction this time was easily to “abandon ship,” but something about the situation threw me for a loop, and I think it was because I wasn’t only assessing the situation for its own sake, but also for the educational experience I was supposed to be forging from it—and letting the story go seemed to me to be taking the easy route that wouldn’t push me any further. But I guess the whole experience leads me back to believing in listening to instinct.
How did setting this story aside help you grow as a writer?
See above. In addition, I’m continuing to evolve my understanding of “developmental editing,” which is nebulous because when you’re self-editing (which is the objective of this mentorship) the distinction between developmental editing and revising is not that clear, though I do think there is a distinction (which of course matters only insofar as it is helpful to a writer).
Finally, I feel the door is still open for this experience to teach me something in the future, as it remains to be seen if, when, and how pieces of the abandoned story might come back for a second life in future stories.
Jack Wong is an author and illustrator based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His forthcoming releases for young readers include When You Can Swim (Scholastic, Summer 2023) and All the Flowers (Groundwood, Spring 2024). He is currently developing a body of short stories for adults through a mentorship with Molly Rookwood, funded by a Professional Development Grant from Arts Nova Scotia.
What a wonderful blog. Thank you, Jack, for sharing your experience. These are lessons about letting go that are worth paying attention to, not just when it comes to writing but in all sorts of situations that life might present.