Letting Go
The first guest blogger to grace my site is Jason Korolenko, the author of The Day I Left, and the upcoming biography of heavy metal legends Sepultura, a band I’ve been listening to for over 20 years. I just finished The Day I Left and thought it was great. It’s also pretty awesome that Jason’s a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fanatic. I appreciate him stopping by and sharing some wisdom.
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I once asked a mentor of mine, Mitch Wieland (whose novel God’s Dogs is, in my opinion, an example of literary perfection), what he thought about when he performed readings. I asked him if he ever read a passage and thought, “Geez, I wish I could change that part.”
His answer was, “Every time.”
I’ve spent the last few days reading proofs of the paperback edition of my novel The Day I Left. I began writing this book over two years ago, have read it and reread it a thousand times, and still, I know exactly what Mitch was talking about. I continue to come across bits I want to change, expound upon, or just play around with.
I’m going to share a little secret. If you’re a writer, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you’re not, you may be surprised to learn that we struggle with self-doubt more, I would say, than any other professional, than any other type of artist.
“Why is that,” you may ask, “when you have years to make a novel perfect?”
Because it will never be perfect. It will never be just right. Writers evolve (and devolve, sometimes) daily. Today, I may read an excerpt of The Day I Left and think it’s brilliant. Next week, I may hate it. Months later I might think it’s brilliant again, and a day after that I may not like it or dislike it. It might just be words on a page, stripped of all magic and meaning through endless revision.
Critical words sting precisely because they make us aware of that self-doubt.
But there comes a point in every manuscript where revisions, edits, and changes cease making the story better, and only make the story different. One of the most important—and most overlooked—aspects of writing, the part you never hear anyone talk about, is that a writer must know when to let go.
I’ve been involved in a love affair with martial arts since I was fifteen (I’m thirty-six now, but don’t tell anyone). For the last six years, I’ve been training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu almost exclusively. If you follow Mark’s blog, you’re probably familiar with BJJ already. If not, it’s enough to know that jiu-jitsu is a submission grappling system that bases its philosophy on the concepts of leverage and timing. Using leverage, a small man can move a mountain. With proper timing, a slower, weaker opponent can exploit a larger, stronger person’s moment of vulnerability.
For the sake of this metaphor, I’m going to focus on one submission: a choke. The word is somewhat of a misnomer; typically, chokes are applied to cut off the flow of blood to the brain, not necessarily to restrict an opponent’s breathing. Thus, when beginners are caught in a “choke,” and are forced to defend, they will often refuse to submit because they are still able to breathe. And if they are still able to breathe, they may think they’re okay.
But then the world fades and goes black around them because the brain is being deprived of oxygenated blood.
So, on the defensive end, a jiu-jitsu student must learn when to let go of that feeling, that voice inside that says “I’m okay; I can still breathe,” and submit to the technique.
The person applying the choke is in a similar predicament. If one little grip is wrong, if the position is wrong, that person can squeeze and squeeze and squeeze . . . and the technique will fail. He will only have succeeded in tiring his muscles, thus making it easier for his opponent to defend, and eventually escape from the position.
Therefore, on the offensive end, a jiu-jitsu student must learn when to let go of a submission, to not muscle through it hoping the opponent will submit to strength instead of proper technique.
If I hadn’t learned about the importance of letting go, I could work the same story, the same novel over and over and over again until the day I die. Instead, I find that point where the novel is as good as it can be, and then I focus on making the next one better.
So, as of today, I’ve let go of The Day I Left, and I’m ready to sink a choke in on the next one.
Thanks again to Jason for stopping by. Be sure to check him out at:
https://twitter.com/jasonkorolenko
