THE ART OF CREATIVE QUITTING

It's fine, and sometimes the right thing to do

photo credit: me

I’ll bet a lot of us got launched into the adult world with the idea that you should “finish what you started” and “follow through”—and the converse: that one should not “give up” or “quit” or skip from thing to thing without “committing.” I know—that’s a lot of quotation marks. But I’m putting those words in quotation marks because I’m really freaking tired of all the bullshit value judgments attached to them.

About six months ago, I shelved a work in progress which had been in progress for something like two years: 300K of notes, more than 100K of draft verbiage, a complete draft all except the last couple of scenes, characters who live and breathe in my head. All on the shelf. No longer in progress. And not finished.