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How do you know when to walk away from a work?
Ashwini Gangal:
Oh it’s simple. I know it’s time to walk away from work when my physical or mental health is being compromised. That’s the only yardstick for me.
Imelda Wei Ding Lo/Fortunus Games (Editor):
I walk away from a work when it's getting repetitive and isn't giving me the joy it was supposed to give. I have no obligation to continue developing a work — not to myself or others.
Teté DePunk (Editor):
I'll admit I'm a writer obsessed. Throughout my writing experience, I've never known when to walk away. It was until a month, on this very year, I finally learned to walk away from several works that were going nowhere.
One work was a story that suffered from too much self-projection about a dissatisfied, depressed woman. It was mostly an escapist trap of aesthetic window dressing and not much else.
The other was harder to let go of. This particular work was my magnum opus (too epic-sounding, I know), but the singular fixation on one single aspect
prevented the work (and the character) from actually maturing.
It became 500+ page drag of repetition. I finally walked away from it.
Maybe I'll return to it.
One thing I've learned — if it drags you down, it won't produce the vision and impact you
want work to create. You need to walk away and let go.
R. N. Roveleh (Editor):
I've never walked away for good.
Maybe it's my pride, maybe my obsession with adjusting and perfecting, maybe my conviction that there is no such thing as a bad idea, only poor execution. Or maybe "walking away" sounds too much like giving up, and the very thought triggers my masochistic pleasure for a challenge.
But I have taken breaks. Long breaks. When I tweak and tweak, and the story committed to paper isn't nearly as good as the one in my head, I realise that I'm, perhaps, not mature or experienced enough for it, so I need to set it aside and let it simmer.
I have several such stories still leavening.
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