Hitting delete to move forward.

One of the interesting things I have found during my first long form writing adventure, the willingness to delete content you have written is mandatory.

While it may not be encouraging to spend an hour or more struggling to get your ideas from your head to a document to then turn around and delete what you have, it does have its benefits.

After having a week of difficulty getting my ideas to flow, fighting to make any headway, and starting to get discouraged with my lack of progress, I took the time to read over what I had struggled to come up with. Before I had even finished reading through it, I knew why I was having so many issues.

I had written myself into a corner and it was killing my ability to move forward.

I knew where I wanted to go, but the ideas that I had been struggling to form into coherent sentences where never going to get me there. I had to refocus my thoughts and get back on track.

For me, the easiest way to do that has been to go back to earlier parts of my work and do some editing, add a little more description where I had left indicator marks to remind me to review my work, or just read over parts to make sure I was keeping my current thoughts consistent with the earlier thoughts.

This rereading triggered the idea that finally got me moving forward again. What was more of a passing note of an observation was now the key to recovering my creative process. It also helped me find the direction I needed to get to the ending I had already mapped out.

The only issue, I had a page and a half of a Word document filled with words that lead away from where I now knew I needed to go.

No matter how many times I read it over, nothing I had written was salvageable.

The third time through, I knew what I had to do.