Literary Cryonics: “Freeze” the Work You Can’t Finish

The pseudoscience of cryonics advocates freezing human bodies in the hope of resurrecting them in the future. (Cryonics is sometimes mistakenly called cryogenics, which is actually the science of very low temperatures.) The idea of cryonics is to preserve a person’s body until the condition that caused their death can be cured. While most scientists believe this idea is impractical from a biological standpoint, I think there is some value in this idea for writers, in a purely metaphorical way.

I often work on a literary project for a long time without arriving at a satisfactory draft, no matter how often or how hard I work on it. The project is “dead,” so to speak. That can happen because the ending just doesn’t fulfill or match the build-up that precedes it. Or a work can feel unfinished because I haven’t established a deep enough emotional connection to the subject or the characters. Or maybe I don’t know enough about the actual life situation that I’m trying to write about. The reality is, I more often leave a literary project unfinished than I complete one. Let’s face it—it’s just damn hard to bring a work of writing to a successful conclusion.

So, throw those nasty rejects out, right? Who wants to be reminded of their failures? But not so fast!

I have a folder where I keep all my unfinished projects. They are “frozen” in the sense that I don’t often look at them or bring them to life in my thought process. Every once in a while, however, I go back to something I wrote years ago and see new possibilities that had alluded me when I last looked at it. That might be because I have the advantage of time to see the work with more distance and objectivity. It could also be because I have experienced more in the interim, and I hope, learned a thing or two about writing, about myself, or maybe even about life. For whatever reason, a work that remained an unsolvable puzzle for me sometimes suddenly falls into place. More precisely, I can see that a solution might be in reach if I just spend a little more time digging deeper into that project.

 

So, if a work feels frustratingly inadequate, despite all your best efforts, don’t give up on it. “Freeze” it—keep it somewhere you can go back over it in the fullness of time. Years or even decades later, you might find a cure for what ails it.

Zack’s new memoir, Hugging My Father’s Ghost

Other posts of interest:

How to Get Published

Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop

How Not to Become a Literary Dropout

Putting Together a Book Manuscript

Working with a Writing Mentor

How to Deliver Your Message

Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?

Why Write Poetry?

Poetic Forms: Introduction, the Sonnet, the Sestina, the Ghazal, the Tanka, the Villanelle

Praise and Lament

How to Be an American Writer

Writers and Collaboration

Types of Closure in Poetry