Last newsletter, I talked about persistence. Today I want to talk about giving up. Let’s call it strategic futility. Why strategic futility? First, it sounds cool. But it’s also a good way to talk about times when it’s important to walk away from a project, at least for a while.

 

Take “Missile Command.” After about a dozen rejections, I grandiosely proclaimed in a social media post that I’d finally given up on it. And I have. I feel okay about it. Really, I’m fine. I gave it my best. I take comfort in knowing that if there’s anything in there worth keeping, it’ll surface somehow. In the meantime, I’m better off putting my energy into something else.

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Some of my favorite stories are offshoots of other pieces. “Zephyr” grew out of an alternate ending to “Mr. Palm Beach.” My flash piece “The Projectionist” was salvaged from the wreckage of an old story called “Sleeper,” which also spawned “Splice” and “Concession” before it expired. 

 

Anyway, about “Missile Command.” The reason I’ve had a hard time letting it go, I think, is that it takes place in an abandoned but still operational video arcade at the beach. It’s just a cool image. Here it is:

 

The air inside is warm and smells like old books, as if there’s an ancient library beneath the worn floorboards. Everything’s lit up and loud, but there’s nobody there. Nobody clacking air hockey pucks or slouching into Tempest or Defender. No Skee-Ballers. No photo booth grinners. No shooters at the fake rifle gallery to pick off tin cans, dispatch buzzards, or make the Old West piano player launch into “Red River Valley” by shooting him in the back.

 

So what’s my point? It’s just that, once you finish a piece, look at it honestly. See it from the reader’s perspective. If it’s working, great. If not, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer. It just means that, for whatever reason, this particular piece isn’t working. So give it your best shot, but it’s okay (even important) to let it go when the time comes—at least long enough for you to find a form that will work. It’s not really giving up. It’s giving up for a while. Which is another form of persistence.