Don’t be afraid to let it go.
This goes along the lines of William Faulkner’s famous quote that goes “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
This is the unfortunate reality that I’ve come to learn slowly over the years. That sometimes, the more precious an idea or story or paragraph or line might be to me, the more worthless it might actually turn out to be.
This isn’t always the case, thankfully. But it can be. Since we are the creators, it’s difficult to always be able to critique ourselves. That’s why sometimes we can have an idea we love that nobody else loves, or we can have a chapter that turns out to be nobody else’s favorite but our own. We can love a sentence so much until an editor spells out why it doesn’t work.
Oh.
That’s usually my response. A surprised oh.
Don’t worry letting it go. Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. That’s okay. At least you’re in the literary woods keeping busy.
Be wary of the things you love too much in those literary woods. Because they just might be the very things you have to let go.
I hate this rule. 😉
Great tip! I tell you, I write a post sometimes and I have the exact idea where and what it needs to say… and the exact catch phrase I want to use in closing.
Then I have to let it go sometimes.
It's hard.
I know it's hard.