J. Bradley Minnick
WELL BEGUN IS HALF DONE

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Okay, so this writing tip is not going to be very popular—particularly in a culture that yells “go-go-go-do-do-do” and imagines that people can attend to more than one thing at a time (which, by the way, we can’t—very well).

My mother was infamous for her “Rise & Shine” lists, which began with the item “rise & shine” (two items really). The first of the compound easy to cross off; the second, for many of us, not so much. (Of course, my father, the cockeyed optimist, always said it was an A+ day when you woke up in the morning at all.) 

Anyway, like my mother, I make lists too, but I have long ago given up the notion of trying to finish anything in the order in which I conceive it. Instead, I let my writing projects linger. I work on each a little at a time, let each project imprint itself in memory until the great big wide here and now conceives of a way to complete it.  

I have one rule, and that’s when I want something “out of my face” or “out the door” that’s the time to bear down, to go back inside, to let things linger, gestate, find its center. And, when I come back to the poem or story after, say, a week, a month or even a year, I am able to see it anew—read it like a reader who has just stumbled upon it. 

Alas, one story that appeared in this very magazine, “A Man’s Reach Should Exceed His Grasp” had its gestation in—wait for it—1987! And I held onto it, let it languish, let it linger, as I waited for it to find its center. In the end, its missing piece found me and 30+ years later—it was, I think, ready—and hey, it’s much better and I’m prouder of it for having waited. 

You will argue that by using this method you will never get anything done—you will imagine the proverbial story of the writer who reduces his novel to one perfect word that s/he never does find—but oh the opposite. You will, if you wait, find yourself in a rhythm, working on many things in various stages of completion. You will also find that when the time comes to let that thing go, to send it out into the world, to say goodbye, you will want to hold onto it a bit longer and that’s the time to let it fly, to send it off, to say goodbye.

So, at the risk of being redundant, I suggest that we make lists and attend to the items on them non-sequentially. I suggest we let things linger, gestate, find their center. I suggest we revisit our stories and poems until we don’t want to see them anymore and hold onto them a bit longer before we release them. I suggest we remember a writing project “well begun is half done.”