Alright, we’ve officially hit 100 subscribers (108, but who’s counting?). It’s a milestone, and with milestones come... changes. But don’t panic — I’m still here, delivering the same dark, poetic nonsense you’ve come to love. I’ll continue to send out free posts every other week, but here’s the twist: every now and then, I’ll be slipping some posts behind a paywall. Think of it as VIP access to deep dives, personalized writing feedback, and the occasional existential crisis too embarrassing to offer up for free. And for the truly heroic philanthropists among us, a Founding Membership will kick off a monthly virtual writing workshop with yours truly.
Feel free to keep enjoying the free stuff (it’s not going anywhere and there’ll always be plenty of it), but if you’re curious to go a little deeper (or are eager to help me slip the shackles of traditional W2 employment), the $5/month “Behind the Curtain” pass will get you access to all that (and maybe a bit more of my soul than is healthy).
More details later. Thank you for being here — your support means more than my sarcastic self lets on. I’m genuinely grateful to have you all on board. Now, enough of that. Into the meat.
You know that saying about how the best relationships are the ones you can’t stop thinking about? That’s how writing should feel, too. When I wrote my first two novels, I was obsessed. I couldn’t wait to get back to the page. I thought about them in the shower, on long drives, while pretending to listen in meetings. I was in love. Deranged, even. The good kind of deranged.
My current project? Not so much. I’ve been hacking away at it for six months and have only 20,000 words to show for it. I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it, but in that anxious “Oh, God, I hope he loses my number” kind of way. Every sentence feels like I’m dragging a corpse through the mud—and not even a fresh one. And the worst part? I keep daydreaming about the next project, the shiny new idea that feels like it actually wants to be written. Like it flirts with me. Like it still texts me good morning.
Then, the other night, at 3 a.m. (because of course—when else do creative epiphanies arrive but when your brain is marinating in insomnia and self-doubt?), I had a realization: maybe this story isn’t a novel. Maybe it’s something else.
This is not an easy pill to swallow. As writers, we’re told to finish what we start. Perseverance is a virtue. Writing is hard, and pushing through the difficult moments is what separates the professionals from the hobbyists. But let’s be real: There’s a difference between working through a difficult draft and performing CPR on a story that’s already flatlined.
Maybe you’ve been there. Maybe you’re there right now. And if you’re feeling the creeping suspicion that your current project is draining the creative life force out of you like some kind of literary vampire, I have some good news: you don’t have to keep going. Not as a novel, anyway. There are other options.
Shrink It Down. Not every story needs 80,000 words. Sometimes, what feels like an underdeveloped novel is actually just a great short story buried under a lot of unnecessary fluff. Try condensing it. Cut out the subplots and see what’s left. You might find a lean, mean, soul-punching narrative underneath all the literary bloat.
Change the Medium. Could this work better as a play? A screenplay? A poem? A novella? Maybe the issue isn’t the story itself but the format you’re forcing it into—like trying to cram a square peg into a round hole, or worse, a mediocre novel into a reader’s already exhausted brain. Some stories just want to be something else. Honor their weird little desires.
File It in the X-Files. I have a folder of strange, unfinished projects that I just couldn’t make work, and I’ll never delete them because who knows? Maybe I’ll come back in five years and see the story in a whole new way. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe it’ll stay in that crypt forever. Either way, it’s not wasted time. It’s just part of the process. We don’t toss old lovers’ letters (well, not all of them)—why toss half-baked stories?
Let It Die. I know, I know. It’s harsh. But sometimes, we need to accept that not every idea deserves to be finished. If the thought of working on this thing for another six months makes you want to fling your laptop into the sea and take up llama farming, take the hint. There are other stories out there. Sexier ones. Kinder ones. Ones that don’t make you feel like you’re stuck in a creative purgatory.
The truth is, every writer has been here. Every writer has had that project—the one that felt like a good idea at the time but turned into an uphill battle with no end in sight. Recognizing when to walk away isn’t failure. It’s wisdom. It’s survival.
If you find yourself slogging through a draft while fantasizing about your next book, take a step back and ask yourself: is this a temporary struggle, or is this the writing gods tapping you on the shoulder and whispering, Hey buddy, time to move on?
We have enough obligations in life. Bills. Deadlines. Group texts with people we don’t like. Writing shouldn’t be one of them. If a story isn’t sparking joy (or at least something more than existential dread and back pain), maybe it’s time to let it go. Or, at the very least, shove it in the X-Files and move on to something that actually excites you.
Because let’s be honest—if you’re not obsessed with your own story, why should anyone else be? You deserve a project that keeps you up at night—for the right reasons. Not because you’re questioning your life choices, but because you’re too wired with creative energy to sleep.
So go chase that next idea. The one that makes you feel like a writer again. The one that texts you good morning.
Note: I’ve included images of some of the most interesting unfinished paintings throughout as visual representations of the frustration (or beauty?) of art gone incomplete. These works went unfinished for a variety of reasons and all of them are interesting. Give them a search if you find yourself wondering, and start with Neel and Holland. It is Women’s History Month, after all.
Regarding the "shrink it down" move, in 2023, I was working on a short story and my fellow writer friend had good things to say about it, but both of us felt something was missing. Then I decided to rather brutally just slash the fat from the story and that did the trick.
I find this sooo difficult but it is such good advice. Also, I was glad to see an explanation for the paintings as I spent the latter half of this trying to figure out what Oscar Pistorius could possibly have to do with any of it.