The Art of Pulling the Plug

"Wasting" time on a creative project, and the importance of knowing when to cut your losses.

Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash

Before we get into this week’s post, this is your reminder that my debut novel, VICTIM, is now available for pre-order. VICTIM is a fearless satire about a hustler from the Bronx who sees through the veneer of diversity initiatives and decides to cash in on the odd currency of identity. If you enjoy this newsletter, I think you’ll also enjoy the book.

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For the last seven months, I’ve been actively tinkering with an essay that I recently decided won’t see the light of day—at least for now.

The essay actually originated as a long, unwieldy draft I first wrote back in 2019. I was fresh out of MFA school, and the last thing I wanted to do was look at my thesis. The essay was one of the first I wrote with the idea that I’d put together a book of long, “baggy” essays, similar to the book Jia Tolentino had just published.

I wrote the first draft quickly. I shared it with friends and my agent. But eventually, I got seduced back into my novel. 

I returned to the draft again in 2021. For some reason, I got the idea that it wasn’t all that bad and decided to pitch it to literary magazines. It was roundly rejected. I put it aside once more. 

In January of this year, I was approached by editors of a new magazine that will launch soon. I described this abandoned essay over a Zoom call, on a whim, because I had nothing else for them.

The editors loved the idea. They accepted my pitch on the spot and gave me a deadline to turn around a draft. 

The whole thing seemed like a wonderful bit of luck. I figured the process of getting it into shape would be simple. I already had this long draft—about 10,000 words—and they were looking for half of that. I’ve always found trimming things down to be easier—even a process I enjoy. 

The first draft was easy. I was able to cut it to a decent size and arrange it into something that was sort of there. Something I figured, upon getting feedback from the editors, would quickly get into publishing shape.

I sent the first draft off in February, feeling good. By March I got back notes that seemed simple to incorporate. And yet, trouble started.

For when I got back into the draft, when I saw it with new eyes and started to work through changes, I began to notice flaws I had either previously ignored or perhaps not noticed. The biggest of them all was that the essay started to feel way too interior. Way too personal. 

I don’t have a problem with writing personal things. I’ve written many here in this space since starting it six months ago. But I’m not the type of writer to write about something personal just to air things out. My goal, whenever I choose to share a piece of myself with the world, is to do so only when what I’m sharing feels integral to some larger insight that will benefit others.

Gratuitous sharing has always felt icky to me. And I started to get an icky feeling while working on the edits of this thing. A feeling I should have listened to. After all, I’d felt it before. 

There was another essay I should tell you about. This one was written a bit before 2019. An essay about my father and our strained relationship that was slated for placement somewhere prominent. 

I wrote a first draft, received notes, and then, upon a lot of dwelling on the piece, pulled the plug on it at the last minute, and gave up the great opportunity it was attached to.

I made the decision because the format just didn’t seem right, and because I realized the story was far too complex and nuanced for me to comprehend at 28 years old. After all, I was still in the process of rebuilding my relationship with my father, who I had only recently seen again after a 15-year absence.

I concluded I didn’t have the chops, or the distance, to write it in a way that would turn it from a sad story into a sad story with meaning.

I started to feel this way again as I worked through most of March and April on this other essay. At the end of April, I emailed the editors and conveyed my hesitation. We had a meeting, and discussed ways to open the essay up, and make it less personal. I left the meeting feeling confident that I could accomplish this. I convinced myself that this essay that was supposed to be easy, and had quickly become something I dreaded looking at, could actually be completed and moved off of my desk—once and for all. 

I worked away, tinkering and tinkering, amidst all of my other writing endeavors. At the end of May, I sent over a new draft, one that seemed like it had some promise.

But the icky feeling was still there, even as I hit send. I wasn’t entirely confident that my efforts to expand the topic outward were all that successful. I wasn’t confident that I had as much to say as I originally thought I did.

Why did I soldier on despite this feeling? I’m sure you’re wondering.

Part of it had to do with the fact that I hadn’t published an essay in a magazine in some time, and getting back out there seemed exciting. Part of it had to do with my willingness to please people, especially editors who say nice things about my writing.

But I think a bigger part of it has to do with the fact that I’m still learning how to identify when a piece of personal writing is something I’m ready to put my name on and usher out into the world. I’m still learning to identify when something meets my standards, before worrying about the standards of others. 

Thankfully, I did catch myself. I shared the story with loved ones, who confirmed what I’d sort of known all along. Something was off. It didn’t sound like me. 

When I got back the final changes earlier this month, I accepted that I couldn’t go through with it. I pulled the plug, despite all the time and energy I ended up investing. Thankfully, the editors and I have come to a resolution to write something else, and nothing is lost—aside from my time. 

But is that true? Did I really waste my time? I’ve had a couple weeks to think about this.

My conclusion is that I didn’t. Because the experience of trying to get this essay right, and nearly putting it out in the world when it wasn’t there yet, feels extremely useful to me. 

As much discomfort as pulling the plug caused me, I’m happy that I did it. I immediately felt lighter, physically. I felt the same way when I pulled the plug on the essay about my dad, too. The process, in both cases, is teaching me to pay attention to some of the physical feelings that come with writing, and how to decipher what they mean.

Writing something vulnerable always feels nerve racking. But there is a slightly different feeling you get when you’re writing something vulnerable that doesn’t feel like it’s having the impact you mean it to have.

Knowing the difference between those two feelings, recognizing which one is which, is hard. 

In my experience, this is why having a trusted reader to hand things over to is so important. After all, they know you. They know what you’re after, and where your heart is. Editors—and this is no shade—are after a good story.

But as a writer, I’m after a good story that also feels good to me. A story I’m proud of having my name on. A story I’ll look back on, undoubtedly find holes in, but will still conclude that it was my best work at the time. 

Because that is the part we can control as writers. How others read what we write, well, that’s up to them. 

Yet, at this moment in time, when publishing moves at the speed of light and every minute there is a new book, article, essay, or Substack post to read, and a fresh demand for your “content” in the world, it can be hard to slow down.

It can be difficult, when concerned about your career prospects, and getting ahead, and keeping your “followers” happy, to pause and think to yourself: Is this thing I’m about to send out there something that I’m happy with? 

But I would argue that this is an important step to take. Especially for something creative, for something in which you’re going to do a bit of bleeding on the page.

There are different standards for journalism. I’ve written many stories I’m not particularly proud of for various reasons—but being proud wasn’t important at the time. I was covering a news event, people needed the news, and I needed to get it to them fast. It's a whole different equation. 

But something creative, something that has a piece of your heart embedded into it—yeah, it’s important to get those things right.

Even if they take a lot longer than you envisioned them taking. Even if it means delaying it for public consumption. And even if it means concluding, eventually, that perhaps they’re only really meant for an audience of one.

Peace,

Andrew

Recommendations:

• I finished Frank Santo’s forthcoming debut novel The Birthparents, and loved it. It’s a tough read, dealing with the Bronx foster care system and all the flaws inherent with a big, messy, under-resourced system faced with gargantuan tasks. And yet, Santo imbues so much humanity into his characters, making them come across as real humans, and not just cogs. The novel will be published on September 12, and I highly recommend you check it out. 

• Since my last post, I saw Barbie and Oppenheimer, albeit spread a couple weekends apart. I loved them both. Oppenheimer made me think profoundly about power, empire, and our ability to see glimpses of forces we were perhaps never meant to see. Barbie, meanwhile, surprised the hell out of me—in a good way. I’m thrilled both have been widely seen, and that they were both extremely artful, in addition to being massive, tent pole films.

• I learned about

  Kathleen Schmidt
  ’s Substack
  Publishing Confidential
  last week and have since read every post. Schmidt demystifies the publishing industry and has made me think a lot about what I should be doing and advocating for when it comes to the publicity and marketing of my forthcoming novel. And, the best part is, her advice is free! I highly recommend checking out her Substack and subscribing—especially writers with books, or books in process out there. 

• I somehow stumbled on this

  Ted Gioia
  piece from May that I found full of great advice for writers—especially those writers out there falling prey to seeking external validation.

• Ross Barkan
  wrote an excellent piece on Taylor Swift and the odd discourse emerging around those who support her, or don’t support her, and the supposed larger meaning embedded in each choice that somehow extends beyond their music taste. Ross is adept at writing about the intersections of art and politics. I also recommend reading his take on Barbie, and whether or not Greta Gerwig “sold out” by making it, and what “selling out” even means anymore these days. (You’ll have to pay for a subscription to read that one, but Ross is worth the money).