How Do We Know if it’s Time to Shelve a Writing Project?

I have a difficult relationship with completion.

I can spot about six different half-finished crochet projects from my desk. It took me nearly ten years to complete my bachelor’s degree because I kept changing majors—and schools. And, for the past many years, I’ve been wrestling with a memoir.

Recently, I’ve been considering shelving that writing project.

Is it time to unravel that “sweater” or just set down the hooks for awhile? Image by Olliss via Unsplash

There are several reasons I’m contemplating letting that project go. Much of the story deals with trauma, and it’s tricky to sit in that energy while trying to also enjoy and balance the demands of my current life. Also, one of the primary reasons I was writing was to try to understand why a family tragedy occurred, and in the process of regular old living, it became clearer to me. And, in the past few years, I found an alternate way of creating resources that might be of service to people who’ve experienced sibling loss, which was one of my initial motivators to complete this memoir. Last but not least, I’ve been writing about this topic for decades. I’m curious to see what else might bubble up on the page.  

But what about completion? What about the countless hours I spent writing and revising? What about stick-to-itiveness?

One thing I love about crocheting is that the stakes are low. If I mess up partway through a project, or get bored with it, it doesn’t really matter if I rip the stitches out or start a new project. As a recovering perfectionist, there aren’t very many places in my life where I let myself off the hook (pun intended) so easily, but crochet is one of them. The meditative state I enter when my hands are busy making something with the yarn and hook is a worthy pursuit, regardless of whether it results in a blanket.

Writing is an art, but I choose to not see it only as a commodity. Writing has been a survival tool for me. It’s how I attempt to make order from the chaos. It’s often how I learn what I’m feeling. Writing helps me frame and understand parts of my life that otherwise seem disparate.

Besides, one of the best parts of writing, to me, is the magic that happens when we show up to the page and we tap into something outside of our own minds.

From that perspective, all those hours I spent on that memoir weren’t wasted.

In the time I spent on my memoir, I grieved. I remembered. I made sense of. I tinkered.

I’ve also been doing a whole lot of living in between. I’ve been raising two kids and nurturing an almost 20-year marriage. I was able to be present and helpful through my dad’s illness and death. We have a dog and a mortgage, and I exercise on the regular. From this little list, perhaps I’m not actually a quitter.  

Completion isn’t the same as commitment.

Maybe writing doesn’t need to be that different from crochet—it’s not the end of the world when I have to rip out stitches or trash the sweater project because it ends up looking more like an oven mitt. Maybe there’s freedom there. Curiosity. Openness.  

But. There’s still one thread of the memoir that I can’t quite let go of. It’s about the amazing women who shepherded me through losing my brother, and how they basically taught me how to connect, get through the tough stuff and live a rich life. I’d like to find a way to tell it, though I’m not yet sure what that might look like. I’m looking forward to giving the story some space, letting go of the vision I had of it in my head, and seeing what might take shape.

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Lynn Shattuck grew up in a Southeast Alaskan rainforest and is now a Maine-based writer. She’s a columnist at Elephant Journal, where she writes about grief, parenting and wellness. Her essays have been featured in Human Parts, Al Jazeera, P.S. I Love You, The Fix, Vice, Fabric, and Mind Body Green.