Let­ting go is a vital part of a pagan prac­tice. In fact, we do it every time the moon starts to wane and again as days become short­er in an act of sym­pa­thet­ic mag­ick, so the orig­i­nal writ­ing of this dur­ing a wan­ing moon over Samhain was par­tic­u­lar­ly apt. But mag­ick or not, let­ting go is impor­tant to every­one, so I came up with a list of things to let go for writ­ers.

[Before we go ANY fur­ther, I want to take a moment to talk about the gaslight­ing effect of tox­ic pos­i­tiv­i­ty. Let­ting go of that which no longer serves us is NOT THE SAME THING!

We’re not going to always look on the bright side. There’s no ben­e­fit to feel­ing guilt over neg­a­tive emo­tions. Just because “it could be worse” does not mean it isn’t bad, or a per­son should nev­er feel bad feel­ings. Not every­thing will work out, and the uni­verse is cold and uncaring—not your secret con­spir­a­to­r­i­al pal. (The ten­den­cy for every­thing to work out is more accu­rate­ly described as…“privilege.”) Not every­one gets a hap­py end­ing. And on top of the ways in which neg­a­tive emo­tions are ignored and shamed, tox­ic pos­i­tiv­i­ty can foun­tain­head a whole move­ment that tries to white­wash sys­temic and sys­tem­at­ic injus­tice with “love and light” and call any attempt to accu­rate­ly rec­og­nize such injus­tice as “neg­a­tiv­i­ty.”

For some folks, some of the items on this list can­not be sim­ply willed out of exis­tence no mat­ter how intense one’s spir­i­tu­al prac­tice. Some will require years of ther­a­py. Some need meds. Some of the items on this list (in some cas­es all) will be made worse by men­tal ill­ness­es, and just wish­ing them gone on a par­tic­u­lar wan­ing moon night won’t fix the prob­lem. Some may be chron­ic in the lives of a num­ber of writ­ers, and they will spend a life­time work­ing around them. I make no val­ue or moral judge­ments about any­one’s ABILITY to let these go. But if they can be released, a writer will be bet­ter for it.]

1- Perfectionism

Spoil­er alert. It’ll nev­er be per­fect. You have to find the sweet spot of “as good as you can get it for what you’re try­ing to do” and then let it go. If you’re try­ing to write a lit­er­ary mas­ter­piece, maybe you put in a few more drafts than if you are punch­ing out the 15th pop­corn nov­el in a series so that your fans will buy it up and keep your rent paid for the next six months. But what­ev­er you’re try­ing to accom­plish, at some point, it’s reached its glass ceil­ing of lim­it­ed returns. And that’s when it’s time for you to do what all artists should do, and move on.

Per­fec­tion­ism just leads to anx­i­ety, pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and a fear of fail­ure that will stymie ANY progress.

Make it as good as you can (for what it is). Per­fect is the ene­my of good. Done is bet­ter than per­fect.

2- Comparative Benchmarks of Success

There will always be some­one with a more wide­ly read blog or bet­ter sell­ing nov­el or who is just a lit­tle fur­ther along in their career. To say noth­ing of the Stephen Kings or the Colleen Hoovers who eclipse us all with their phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess. This has nev­er been clear­er to me than hav­ing entire MFA cohorts gawk­ing at my rel­a­tive suc­cess while I try to jus­ti­fy the expense of eat­ing at Pan­era for the sec­ond time in a week. I bet Stephen King gets Pan­era just as often as he…. okay, maybe best to let this go.

We are absolute­ly SOAKING in a com­mer­cial cul­ture that wants us to com­pare our­selves to each oth­er. (Often so we’ll buy a prod­uct that’ll make us feel bet­ter about that com­par­i­son.) But these com­par­isons lead to feel­ings of envy, depres­sion, and are inex­tri­ca­ble from a cer­tain vir­u­lent sense of enti­tle­ment about what we are due. Bet­ter to focus on the work and how to con­tin­ue forth with the best pos­si­ble effort day after day.

3- Rampant Materialism

Look, there’s a whole move­ment that tries to shame poor peo­ple for going to the emer­gency room or for eat­ing any­thing but beans and rice. Fuck that move­ment. Fuck the peo­ple who pro­mote it. Fuck the wealthy try­ing to shut the poor up by blam­ing them for their pover­ty. FUCK ALL OF IT.

We all require safe­ty, which includes food secu­ri­ty, shel­ter, med­ical care, and not wor­ry­ing about the click­ing noise that the only car avail­able we have to get to the job two towns over has start­ed mak­ing. There are an awful lot of peo­ple who have noth­ing to cut out of a bud­get and who have to do what they can to make ends meet. Believe me. I walk a neigh­bor’s dog for a few bucks any­time I want Pan­era.

But there is a lev­el of mate­ri­al­ism that a writer could do with­out. This is not a well-pay­ing career until/unless one is well estab­lished with a LOT of work in the rearview. Every­thing from being secure on a tighter bud­get to not hav­ing to work long hours at some job that takes you away from writ­ing will be served by not let­ting a nev­er-sat­ed lifestyle obses­sion dic­tate the unend­ing quest for more and bet­ter stuff.

4- Limiting Beliefs/Negative Self-Talk

You can’t do ANYTHING you set your mind to, no mat­ter what the cis-het white male moti­va­tion­al speak­er with the six-fig­ure salary says you can. And acknowl­edg­ing sys­temic and sys­tem­at­ic injus­tices and inequal­i­ties in a world ram­pant with both is not some­how what’s hold­ing folks back. No mat­ter how clear the thought, or how many can­dles are lit, no one can man­i­fest them­selves out of real-world lim­i­ta­tions.

But there is a nee­dle to thread, espe­cial­ly for a writer. If you give oxy­gen to your cat­a­stroph­ic intru­sive thoughts, you cre­ate a real­i­ty in which these objec­tives are just as impos­si­ble as you believe them to be. You basi­cal­ly spell these lim­i­ta­tions into exis­tence. (Or if you pre­fer the psy­cho­log­i­cal code switch­ing of “hav­ing low self-esteem due to neg­a­tive self talk,” we can go with that.) If you keep think­ing that you can’t write that book or no one will ever want to read you, you are very like­ly to talk your­self out of even try­ing. Then you def­i­nite­ly won’t get it done.

Some­times there’s a fine line between blithe­ly spew­ing rain­bows up peo­ple’s gap­ing but­t­holes and a sim­ple belief that you can accom­plish some­thing worth­while if you keep try­ing. (Maybe not exact­ly what you want­ed, but some­thing.) Not every pos­i­tive thought has the abil­i­ty to alter your real­i­ty… but iron­i­cal­ly, most neg­a­tive ones actu­al­ly do.

5- Concern for the Opinions of Others

Please under­stand that I’m not telling you to go pub­lish your unedit­ed NaNoW­riMo nov­el because oth­er peo­ple’s opin­ions are use­less. I’m not telling you that you don’t need an edi­tor or peer feed­back or to lis­ten to any­one. You have to be will­ing to lis­ten to some peo­ple.

But it’s up to you who.

If you sit around and wor­ry about the opin­ions of every­one, you’ll nev­er get it done. It’s just too damned scary. MOST peo­ple won’t like what you do. Peo­ple won’t like your style. They won’t like your con­tent. They won’t like your pol­i­tics. They won’t like your phi­los­o­phy. They won’t like your adher­ence to a style guide that puts in the com­ma when they would­n’t have. They won’t like your adher­ence to a style guide that leaves out the com­ma that they would have put in. They won’t like that you said “fuck.” They won’t like your joke about cis-het white dudes. They won’t like that you eat at Pan­era. There are eight bil­lion peo­ple in the world, and even if you some­how man­age to repro­duce the out­ra­geous, phe­nom­e­nal, unthink­able suc­cess of She Who Shall Not be Named and sell 500 mil­lion copies, you still will have 15/16ths of the world basi­cal­ly unim­pressed by you. MOST peo­ple aren’t going to like you. And if you sit around car­ing about all of them, not only will your sim­ple act of express­ing YOURSELF suf­fer, but you’ll nev­er find the peo­ple who will think you’re great.

6- Your Past Failed Goals

You either hit those goals or you did­n’t.

Kudos if you did—or got close.

If not, don’t dwell on it. Get up. Dust your­self off. Set new goals—perhaps slight­ly eas­i­er ones. This is a new day/week/month/year.

I want­ed to be pub­lished by 30… then 40… now I’m think­ing 50 might be a stretch. (And now I’m look­ing back and real­iz­ing I was “pub­lished” dur­ing all those times and a work­ing writer by 40, so maybe I need to rethink what I ever meant by any of it. Mon­ey for Pan­era, per­haps?)

But if I let my fail­ure at 30 define me, I’d nev­er have a writ­ing career. Hell, if I let my fail­ure to write two arti­cles a week dur­ing my can­cer recov­ery define me, I’d be sunk.

If you aren’t fail­ing at goals from time to time, your goals are too easy. Set new ones.

7- Saying Yes to Everything

Pro­tect your writ­ing time.

Pro­tect your writ­ing time.

Pro­tect your writ­ing time.

I can’t tell you what your pri­or­i­ties in life are. Fam­i­ly? MMORPGs? Sex par­ties? Dat­ing? Eat­ing at Pan­era? Off-road moun­tain bik­ing? But if you say yes to EVERYTHING, there’s noth­ing left for writ­ing. It’s real­ly that sim­ple.

Set your pri­or­i­ties. Say no to every­thing else.

8- The Excuses

They are like gap­ing pre-rainbow’ed buttholes—everyone has them and most of them smell like swamp ass. (Wait… I think I “de-clichéd” that phrase a lit­tle TOO hard.)

You’d be hard pressed to find some­one who DOESN’T think they have a book in them… along with a list of excus­es as long as their arm for why they haven’t writ­ten it.

If you don’t want to write, don’t write. That’s okay. No, real­ly, that’s real­ly, real­ly, REALLY okay.

If you do want to write, you have to let go of the excus­es.

[Insert a Pan­era joke here.]

9- Hubris

Neg­a­tive self-talk is one thing. Think­ing you don’t need an edi­tor or that your first draft is ready after a quick edit is anoth­er. Get rid of both.

If you want to be a writer, you have to let go of the idea that you are a gift to the writ­ten word. You need an edi­tor (maybe two). You need to revise. You need to trust the process and rewrite rather than just pol­ish your first draft. You need to get messy.

If you just want to self-pub­lish, admire your own book on your own book­shelf, and nev­er even sell enough to buy lunch at Pan­era, don’t let me get in your way. But if you want more than your pres­sured-into-it friends buy­ing your nov­el… if you want that sweet sweet Street Corn Chow­der and Mediter­ranean Veg­gie Sand­wich “You Pick Two”… you need to release your ego.