Learning to erase and restart is a vital creative skill.
I’ll never forget the first time it happened to me. I got started on my daily work on a writing project by listening back to what I had written the previous day. When I got to the end, I highlighted everything I had written, closed my eyes, and pressed delete. Then I got to work writing something else.
Since then, I have gotten more comfortable with this essential part of the creative process. It’s only through trying things that we can get anywhere, and so it’s inevitable that sometimes we’ll try things that don’t work.
Now, I’ve erased dozens of whole pieces worth of writing that I didn’t think worked, and I have erased and restarted hundreds of posts here for the same reason. (I erased and restarted and entire posts today, in fact.)
Learn to trust your own creativity enough to erase and restart – trust that you will have more to say.