Right before my first seven-day silent retreat (what in Zen is called a sesshin) one of my teachers gave me the following instruction. “Let go early—and often.” Though he’d phrased the advice as a joke (Zen priests make more jokes than you’d imagine), it was also an extremely useful suggestion.
Over the course of those seven days, I learned to let go of a lot of things. The need to talk. The desire to sleep in my own bed. The impulse to shift around on my cushion. The pursuit of enlightenment.
I’ve been trying to apply this concept of letting go to my writing life. For the past three years, I’ve been working on a novel set in New York City in the 1970s. Lately though, I’ve come to see that the story has serious structural problems. This isn’t just… “Maybe I need to know my character better.” This is… “Hang on a minute, the entire premise on which I’ve constructed the plot doesn’t actually hold water.”
Like most problems with novels, this one isn’t insurmountable. It can be fixed with a lot of rethinking—and even more rewriting. The thing is…I don’t feel like doing it.
When it comes down to it, I no longer care about this story, or these characters, or—more importantly—why I wanted to write this book in the first place. I’m not sure why this is, except perhaps, that I am a different person than I was three years ago.
That said, I am having a difficult time letting this book go, and I’ve been trying to figure out why.
The notion of letting go implies that there is something you’re holding onto. Or as Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron puts it…
The essence of generosity is letting go. Pain is always a sign that we are holding on to something - usually ourselves.
So what am I holding onto? Certainly not those characters, who have started to bore even me. Or that plot, which doesn’t work anyway. I suspect what I’m holding onto is the image of myself as the kind of writer who finishes what she starts. The kind of writer who doesn’t spend three years on a book, and then walks away from it.
Still, as Thich Nhat Hanh says…
Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free.
As I start letting go of this book (I suspect I have a NYC in the 1970s novel in me, just not this one), I find there’s a freedom (and happiness) in identifying what it is I’m holding onto—even if I’ve still got a slight grip on it. Enough perhaps, to free me up for another book.
I really needed to hear this. I recently decided not to revise a 275-page manuscript and while part of me felt like a failure for walking away (even as I dove into something new that excites me), another part insisted that letting go was the right and brave thing to do. That part is shouting, happily, from the rooftops now. Thank you!
Okay that stopped me in my tracks--in a good way. And wow. I'm excited about what comes after this for you.