When to let go of a story

Spotting stories that don't work for you anymore

Photo by Максим Степаненко on Unsplash

As I started writing this post, I realised that the title has so many meanings - I thought I was going to write about letting go of my novella-in-flash, which I have finally sent out to publishers after a long time of sitting on it. I started writing it in late 2019 then a few months later one of my closest friends passed away suddenly. As the first anniversary of his wife’s death approached, he decided he couldn’t go on without her. The shock of his decision and losing him too when we were all still reeling from the loss of his wife, who died suddenly after having an experimental treatment for the cancer she had only just been diagnosed with, was immense.

Then a few weeks later the entire world went into lockdown, three more friends died in the space of six months, one of a heart attack, one from a brain tumour he’d had for a long time, and the other from a recently diagnosed cancer that couldn’t be treated because of the pandemic, and my head was in bits for a while. My novella ground to a halt. I couldn’t write at all.

But as I wrote that last sentence above, I realised that as well as letting go of that novella I’ve written, I need to let go of the story I’ve been telling myself about not being able to write. All through the years since then, years in which the losses kept piling up and another seven people died, I have written a lot. I have a flash fiction collection that is pretty much done and ready to send to publishers and I’ve written many other stand-alone stories that are at various stages of development. I completed and edited my novella-in-flash; I have written seven new fiction courses; I’ve written more non-fiction articles for my life as a freelance journalist than I can remember; I’ve written countless posts and newsletters for the Retreat West community and emailers; and I have started this Substack. So clearly, the story I have been telling myself about not being able to write is not true.

In the Mindful Fiction course I wrote while I was apparently unable to write, in the workshop focused on storylines I talked about how a part of learning to live more mindfully was changing the stories I told myself about myself. I had let the story go about how the things that happened to me growing up in a dysfunctional, violent and abusive family defined who I was today. So I found it really interesting when writing this to discover another disempowering story was still being regularly told by my monkey mind and I was accepting it as truth. But it will tell it no more, I am letting that story go too.

What about you? What stories do you tell yourself that hold you back and that it might be time to let go of?

What about the characters you write in your stories? What do they need to stop telling themselves about themselves, their past, their present and their future?

One of the greatest things I’ve discovered on this journey is that no matter how far along the path I get, there’s always more to discover on the way. And each discovery seems to be lightening the load of what I’m taking with me on the next stage.

I hope you’re finding ways to lighten your load too.

With love,

Amanda x

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