Lately I’ve been trying something a little different. Instead of dedicating myself to the writing, I’m dedicating myself to the story. To the bigger picture.
This is a big shift for me. I am one (maybe you are, too?) who becomes sentimental about words, sentences, paragraphs I like that I wrote. The issue with such sentimentality or attachment is that, what good is a beautiful sentence if it doesn’t serve the larger piece I am working on? And why am I holding onto it?
We don’t need to go into the neurotic reasons I’m holding onto it, but this much I know: I can save the old file, dissect and reshape it, rename it, and still have all those other “writings” I am attached to. I can pull them up if needed, and use portions here or there. I can feel secure leaving them behind knowing that the story is my focus now – not only my private writing time. My written words are always there to serve my story (rather than my story serving them). Maybe they will. Or maybe they won’t.
Either way, I move forward.
And, tomorrow, it may be the writing process I choose to honor first.
It’s fluid.
