This, Distilled
Perseverance
Audience
Perfectionism
Liberation
Letting things go
Unfinished
Interested
Freedom
I have mentioned the importance of seeing things through and finishing things, but one of the most important things I have learnt over the years is when to shelve things or just to let them go.
I’m sure we all have things in life with which we persevere because they were once good and healthy. I don’t think we take enough time to stop and consider whether continuing is really the best course of action. Of course, in the extreme, this relates to relationships and friendships; but it should and does also relate to creative projects.
Some ideas are time-bound. Not just in terms of their reception – predicting the upcoming zeitgeist – but in terms of our own personal development. Ideas about which we are so passionate may lose not just their lustre but their relevance over time. They’re just not that important to us anymore, yet because the idea was so good, it is hard to let go. It should work, so why isn’t it working?
The truth is we all move on, but we often feel a reluctance to admit that in terms of our creative drive and interests.
This isn’t to say we should stop just because things are getting difficult and we can’t see our way through a particular thorny element of the writing or editing process; the key is radical, almost painful, honesty.
Similarly, be honest about your audience. Make sure what you’re writing doesn’t do you a disservice by sub-tweeting at one specific person. It’s not worth the effort, and I strongly suspect it won’t be too long until the shine fades from whatever – potentially entirely justified – emotion has been driving you on. Again, a caveat: that’s not to say your writing shouldn’t be challenging, angry, or sad. Writing such things can be cathartic and valuable. Just think about its shelf-life and how you will feel in a few years’ time, once you have moved past your current emotional state. Consider turning it into something more powerful, something stronger and of broader relevance.
There is an expanse of freedom involved in letting go or pausing and shelving something. For years, I have wanted to be able to write beautiful flowing notebooks that look like something you want to keep. The bare bones should be there: I enjoy writing with a fountain pen far more than I do a ballpoint pen, and I use my notebooks not just for lists but for thoughts, ideas, and snippets of writing, too. But the truth is, when an idea strikes me, I write so fast before it escapes, in some kind of fevered excitement, that it is nearly always scrappy and – if I don’t type it up within a reasonable time afterwards – unreadable. I realised eventually that I just am not that person who will be able to look back on beautiful, handwritten and actually readable notebooks, and the effort to try to be that person isn’t worth it. I will lose a part of me and my creative process by trying to shoehorn myself into an aesthetic that just doesn’t work.
There’s a related point to this, and that is that an ideal, a concept of perfectionism, is possibly the most damaging thing that can afflict a writer. Don’t get me wrong, there is value in trying to make something the very best that it can be, but it can also be the problem that hampers your progress most.
Having previously spent many years working in Higher Education, I can’t count the number of times that I have seen students – very intelligent students – bury their head in the sand about deadlines or responsibilities because they couldn’t bear for things not to be just right. I struggled with this myself during my research studies, when I was required to submit drafts. Though attention to detail has always been a crucial part of my working life, I do remember one of my first line managers gently telling me that not everything always needs to be the gold standard.
If we refuse to let things go and share our words and work, then we exclude ourselves from the conversation. I’ve mentioned before how I specifically developed the model for Scribbles and Sketches because I had identified my own reluctance to let things go as one of my biggest creative weaknesses.
It is incredibly refreshing and liberating to share works in progress, unpolished notebooks. That isn’t to say that we shouldn’t polish in due course, finish what we have started, but I can’t help but wonder about the sheer potential for works of art that will never see the light of day due to artistic reticence; a struggle to acknowledge that art, like ourselves, is a work in progress.
We are all unfinished and always will be.
Throughout this week, I have shared a series of essays that I have been sketching notes on for months, possibly years in some cases. I needed to finally let them go, to let them drift out into the ether. To clear the mental decks, in a way (these thoughts are only a fraction of the notes I have for works of fiction and non-fiction, but I need to start somewhere). These will inevitably not be the last words I have on these topics, but I am quite comfortable with the idea of putting them out there to allow the thoughts to crystalise before I revisit them at some point in the future. Perhaps, at some point in the next few years, I will revise some of my thoughts and publish a book of collected essays.
This approach allows me to remain interested, to keep things fun. How often do we drive something we’re working on into the ground, spoil it for ourselves, because we don’t know when to shelve it for a while or to let it go? Letting something go might mean sharing it with others for their thoughts or enjoyment, but it can also mean deciding that the time has come to let it go entirely. Not to share it at all, but to accept that we will never get to the point where we are comfortable with putting it out there. That we, finally, have to accept the project is not happening and shelve it permanently.
I have a sneaky suspicion that we all have projects that we should put aside forever. Those projects that are taking up far too much space in our minds, like a toxic relationship. Let them go. I guarantee you will feel lighter immediately.
Writing, creativity of any kind, brings enough frustrations and irritations from time to time. Let’s not make things any less fun by hanging on to things or persevering too long when we should be taking a break or just accepting that we have moved on; we have grown, and what was once urgent and important no longer holds us in the same creative thrall.
As the end of the calendar year draws near, as we look over the previous twelve months and think about what we want to dedicate our energy to in the next twelve months and beyond, perhaps the best present you can give yourself is to be honest about who you were, who you are now, and finally let yourself be free.
Snippets
You may find Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter on the goose in the bottle an interesting companion read. I definitely suggest you read Burkeman’s newsletter on laughing in the face of standards.
My brother, Alexander M Crow, keeps beautiful notebooks. He wrote about them here, though the photographs are not currently available as the website is under construction.
Find Me Elsewhere
My newsletter, Vignettes, will always include a round-up of the various digital haunts I have been frequenting over the previous months, as well as an indication of where I might be the following month.
I host seasonal notebooks under the banner of Scribbles and Sketches, four a year, each lasting a calendar month and following a single theme, which may be predominantly textual or predominantly visual.
I am currently hosting a year-long project, Simply This, featuring suggestions of fun and interesting things to do. Bursts of nostalgia, old-fashioned fun in its simplest state, and a not insignificant amount of cheerful daftness.
I am sporadically active on Substack Notes.
I have just launched my new project for 2026: TessaHedron: A Writer’s Notebook. I’ll be sharing weekly posts from January 2026, all associated with my fiction project, TessaHedron. It will be an exercise in creativity rather than specifically chronological storytelling, including all manner of things relating to worldbuilding, writing, editing, and distribution in their broadest forms. It’s free to sign-up until the end of 2025.