Heeding My Own Writing Advice

My 2025 "Quest"

For fun, I’m going to occasionally post my 2025 rejections tally: So far, four!

Follow the Excitement!

I was recently working on a story that I’d submitted to (and subsequently received rejections from) a few journals. As I was revising it—cutting words, shaping it more—I realized that I didn’t love the story. Objectively, it’s a decent story, and I’m certain I could find a place to publish it if I kept working at it.

But I’m no longer excited by the story. And that’s important.

Here’s the thing: readers know when you’ve lost interest in your story, when you’re no longer excited by it. It shows.

In his book Refuse to Be Done, Matt Bell writes about “following your excitement,” noting that “[y]our excitement will generate more excitement—and you will avoid the alternative, where your boredom generates more boredom,” adding later on that same page: “The pleasure of the author is one of the best guides that you, the author, can follow. Even before you know what your book [or story, in my case] will do for readers, you can pay attention to what it’s doing for you” (p. 21).

In my work as an editor, I can almost always, with very little doubt, tell where the writer got bored when writing or, especially in cases of academic or technical writing (which I often edit), where the writer just wanted to be finished.

It finally dawned on me that by continuing to work on this story that I was no longer excited about, I was doing what I typically advise other writers against (which I write more about here).

So I finally decided to heed my own advice.

It doesn’t matter how much time you’ve invested in something; if it no longer brings you joy or fulfillment, let it go. You don’t have to explain yourself or rationalize your decision. (And this goes for many things in life, not just writing!)

But…Devil’s Advocate: What If?

As I noted in my previous post, 2025 is my year for “taking risks.”

Is letting go of a story taking a risk?

According to my definition of “taking risks,” yes. (Naturally, everyone may interpret “taking risks” differently.)

I’m not worried about having “lost” any time on the story. That’s the nature of writing. And time spent writing is never wasted, regardless of what one eventually does or doesn’t do with what they’ve written.

So, perhaps the risk is the what if. The unknown.

What if can be a great prompt in creative writing. What if my character turns into a bird? What if my character has no sense of time but a strict schedule to follow?

But asking what if doesn’t always serve us well in reality—particularly those of us prone to overthinking.

The reality for me is that I’m writing new stories all the time, and I always have plenty of stories I could work on—stories that do excite me.

I finally closed the file for the story in question. I haven’t deleted the story’s folder, though, because I rarely (if ever) delete drafts. I can return to it at any point and pull a line or an idea from it. But I don’t have to pursue it in its current form any further.

And this, my writerly friends, is a kind of freedom. Creative freedom.

Freedom and Being True to Myself

In conjunction with “taking risks,” this year is about being true to myself and my “quest” to rediscover/reclaim myself—the person I used to be, back when I was happier, more hopeful, and much more “fancy-free.” But also not that person, because that would be impossible, but someone who embodies that former person’s values, including these:

• Being unapologetically myself—quirky, creative, and weird. When I was in my teens and early twenties, I rarely thought about what others might think about my art; I just did it.

• Being innovative and open to new ideas and experiences. Somehow we tend to lose this interest in newness as we grow older; with it, we lose a sense of optimism.

• Immersing myself in the creative life, surrounding myself with creative energy. Like with newness, this can sometimes be hard to maintain as we age—or even to find/locate at all!

I recently came across an old journal entry (in an old notebook) from a time in my life when I was at a crossroads—caught between needing to earn a living and desiring to live the kind of creative life I really wanted, and, like many of my generation, was offered exactly zero guidance on how to do both.

“I want to hang out with musicians and artists and poets / All living for the same Nirvana / I don’t want a 9 to 5 job in a sewer”—journal entry from 5-26-99

I knew what I wanted back in 1999, and in the over twenty-five years that has passed, this has never changed. And back in 1999, I wrote and wrote and wrote all the time, “abandoning” poems and stories regularly, letting them go. Never looking back. So why should I now spend time on stories that past me would have just let go?

The short answer: I shouldn’t.

If 2025 is about living my truth, that means, for me, focusing on the things—and stories—that I’m excited about—and not working on a story (or doing some other unnecessary task) just because I think I should or because I’ve put X amount of time into it.

Prompt: Harvesting from Your Abandoned Stories