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| Photo via Pixaba |
Me: Sit down, it's time we talk.
[The story sits in the chair on the opposite side of the table, adjusting its pages as it takes a seat.]
Story: Sure, what's up? I think you've done some great work -
Me [putting my hand up]: Stop, this isn't easy to say...
Story [looking concerned]: What's going on? I thought....I thought we were happy together. You've been working so hard.
Me [avoiding eye contact]: I know, it's just that...our relationship isn't going anywhere. I have no more to give.
Story: But we've been together for years! So many drafts! All those scene changes! All those plots you've tried!
Me: I know and I've really loved everything you've become, except I think we need to say goodbye.
Story [tears welling up in the story's eyes]: No, don't say it. I can't accept this.
Me [crying]: It's not like we'll never see each other again. I'll be thinking of you -
Story [standing up]: Don't, please. Let me leave with some dignity left.
Me: [as the door closes and the story is gone]: Goodbye.
----
Despite all of our best efforts, sometimes we need to say goodbye to a story. Truly, ruthlessly goodbye. Sometimes it needs to be taken out from the drawer and tossed. Or sometimes, coldly deleted off of the computer.
I did this recently and I realized how much I needed to. I didn't want to start 2019 with this story on my shoulders. Despite my own insisting on calling it a "short story," at one point I had a draft that was over 18,000 words (that isn't a short story by the way). I would often go back to the beginning and try again to create a newer and better version. I had changed the setting endlessly. First, it was at a circus. Then a carnival. Then a corn maze. Then back to a carnival. My main character was an adult, then a teenager, and then a middle school kid then some ageless uncertain version of a human that I haven't figured out yet. Despite every attempt, whether it was 2,000 or 18,000 words, each draft had one thing in common - nothing was sticking and nothing about it felt right.
When it was time to say goodbye, I hit the delete button on the story drafts. Afterward, I wasn't emotional. I wasn't nostalgic. I knew it was time.
Now, several weeks into 2019, and my writing is already better. I feel free. Ideas are rushing forward and I'm even able to recover some old story ideas I never tried out before and have fun with them.
I don't know what it is about letting go of a story but sometimes that is the best thing we can do. For me, I thought maybe I could reshape this story that took so many different forms, but I realized what I was trying to do was make a story work that wasn't interesting to me anymore.
While the curtain has closed on that story of mine, maybe someone else will pick up the idea somewhere in the universe and they'll make it into something I couldn't. I'd like to think when we say goodbye to an unfinished story, it's because another writer wants to use the idea themselves.
When was the last time you said goodbye to a story you couldn't complete? How did you feel afterward?
Nicole Pyles is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest. Follow her writing journey on Twitter @BeingTheWriter or visit her writing blog at The World of My Imagination.
