16. When to let a story go

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04/26/24 • 30 min

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It’s pretty much objectively true that finishing stories is an excellent way to get better at finishing stories. This is true on both a practical level and a skills level — in addition to requiring persistence, writing endings is a technically difficult aspect of the craft, no matter what genre you’re writing.

But while getting to the end of a project is often excellent practice... I don’t think it’s actually always best to push through to the finish. Sometimes pushing through becomes a reinforcement of unhelpful craft habits, ways of approaching our stories that we’re ready to outgrow but don’t know how to yet.

How can we know when we need to stick it out with a tricky project (even if we don’t really want to), vs when we need to let that project go (even if we don’t really want to)?

I’m sharing three key questions to help you discern the path forward when the writing gets tough, plus my best advice for what to do when it really is time to let a project go.

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How can we know when we need to stick it out with a tricky project (even if we don’t really want to), vs when we need to let that project go (even if we don’t really want to)?

I’m sharing three key questions to help you discern the path forward when the writing gets tough, plus my best advice for what to do when it really is time to let a project go.

_____

https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/

_____

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

15. Reclaiming your creative calling

Ever found yourself lying awake very late at night or very early in the morning wondering if you've missed your calling in life? I'm guessing most writers will be in the yes camp; we tend to be sensitive souls, primed by school and work and even religion to long for "the call" to a vocation of purpose and meaning.

I think our insomniac worries stem from a common cultural fallacy: ideas about having a calling are often conflated with having a career. And this reduction fundamentally confines our vision of what a vocation can be, who gets to have one, and what counts as valuable work.

But writing as a vocation follows an internal rubric of integrity, not an external one of success — which gives you the freedom to measure your creative life by its impact on your spirit, not by your job or your publishing credits.

Tune in to explore what makes vocation such a powerful idea for creatives, and how reclaiming it might shape your writing.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

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Episode links:

This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley

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Next Episode

17. Dead, mad, or a poet (Or, how to be less tortured)

(First things first: Thank you to thank Taylor Swift for releasing The Tortured Poets Department last month and thus making this episode kind of topical...)

We’re all way too familiar with the idea that emotional suffering or “madness” is the most powerful source of our creativity. It’s the cultural story that just won’t die. But today, I’m sharing a folklore-and-history-informed counter-narrative.

(Note that this is truly not even a lukewarm album take, Swifties do not come for me.)

In this narrative, it’s not madness we’re supposed to be seeking when we go out to the edge of ourselves in search of inspiration – it’s divine joy. The kind of joy that by its nature isn’t going to look or feel the way we’d expect it to, but that will bring us closer to our truest fates.

I think we have a duty to liberate our stories from the cult of the tortured artist. After all, we get to choose the lineages of our creative work. So if we don’t want to be the tortured poet... we don’t have to be.

Tune in to discover what the lineage of the inspired poet can offer us instead.

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https://www.inspiritedword.com/about/#the-praxis-circle

Prefer to access subscriber content via Substack? I got you: https://inspiritedword.substack.com/

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Episode links:

Cauldron of Poesy translations

General historical references

H. R. Ellis Davidson, Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/agora/2018/03/dead-mad-or-a-poet/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadair_Idris#Myths,_legends_and_popular_culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Knockgrafton