Sometimes it just doesn’t work.
I’m talking about songwriting. Or it could be about arranging. A sermon. Or even recording. Sometimes, an idea just doesn’t work. You can hang with it for a while, investing precious time and energy and it just doesn’t sparkle like you want it to. What do you do?
1) It releases you from emotional investment.
Consider this “cutting the cord.” Sometimes, when we hang with a particular project or way of doing the project, we get emotionally invested in it. If we don’t get emotionally involved with our work, then there is a problem! When our investment just isn’t paying off, sometimes letting the emotions go can give you that sense of lift that will help spur you on to a reboot.
2) It gives you the opportunity to save the gold nugget.
In the midst of your song, was there a great harmonic “accident” that was perfect? Analyze it and keep that idea, maybe even expanding it in the new, “2.0” version. Was the introduction brilliant? Did you learn something about how you mixed the project, even though the project itself didn’t turn out? Keep that as a building block for the next version.
Maybe by taking the seed idea from the Bible study you’re working on, you can drop the rest and start over. But with the key idea, you’ll be better off starting afresh.
3) It grows your 6th sense about what works.
Do you ever wonder how people can get that sense that something isn’t going to work? Or they have a real belief that some song has real potential. That knack for picking winners isn’t developed overnight. It is cultivated by being able to zoom out from one’s current situation and see the bigger picture. When we get all wrapped up in what we’re doing, it is hard to see things from that needed, larger perspective. But if you get in the habit of being able to cut the cord, your sense of what works in the larger scheme of things will get stronger. That will help you on future projects.
So let it die if needs to die. Let it die so that it can live again.