I’ve always found it hard to delete stuff.

What if I need it? What if it was good? What if this thing is me? What if it’s what makes me unique?

Does it mean I did that work for nothing? Did I waste my time?

If you’re an artist or if you make things, and any of these questions speak to you, this post is for you. And like many of my other posts, I am writing this as a way to speak to myself.

Examples From The Wild

The struggle to delete is a special type of creative block, and it can take many forms. Consider these scenarios:

• A musician working on a song: The mix sounds muddy, but you’ve spent weeks on it. The guitar solo is almost a minute long, but you can’t bring yourself to trim it down. It feels like you.
• A writer working on a blog post: Your draft is a 15-minute read, twice as long as it should be. You could cut a few metaphors, but they’re part of your unique voice. Would people understand your point without them? Would they relate?
• A video maker: The b-roll sequence feels too long, but you spent so much time on it. You’re proud of how cinematic it looks, and you want people to see how serious you are about your craft.

All these problems have a technical solution. You have the skills to solve them. But it is not really a technical problem, it is an emotional one: the fear of losing your identity, your work, or your credibility.

The Problems (All Within Your Control)

Why is deleting stuff hard? When we find it difficult to remove something from a creation, it usually comes down to:

• Making decisions is hard: It requires a special type of energy. We can run out of it (temporarily). It gets worse if you try deciding whether something is worth writing as you write it: you might end up not writing much, and censoring yourself.
• Feeling like you are betraying yourself: You put so much work into it, if you delete a paragraph, it’s like you never spent the time. It’s like it never happened. To honour that work, that time spent, you must keep it. It’s similar to the sunk-cost fallacy, that voice that tells you “I’ve already invested so much, I can’t give up now”.
• Feeling like you are compromising your voice: It feels like silencing yourself. Diluting yourself. These words, this solo, this scene in your video, they feel like you. It’s your voice. No one else’s. If you remove some of it, would it still be you? It might just look like anybody else’s work.
• Getting emotionally attached to your stuff: You develop feelings for what you made. Obviously, creating things and making art can make you feel something! It can bring you joy, sadness, get you to work through anger or fear. What I am talking about here is getting attached to the point where you can’t throw it away if it’s not needed, or if it’s not good. You feel guilty if you remove it (I made a terrible mistake!!), You feel guilty if you don’t (I can’t make decisions!!).
• Self-censorship: Deleting stuff before you write it. You edit yourself inside your head and end up not writing much because you’re too self-critical. It’s the final form of “deleting is hard”: not writing it in the first place.

Coming Back Is Not The Same As Never Leaving

Deleting stuff is not complicated, it is quite simple. There is a finite amount of steps to get there. But it is hard, because you have to make choices.

As someone who moved away from where I grew up, and even moved countries, I sometimes think about how it would feel to move back to Northern France. Would it feel like “regressing” to a previous state? I guess not. I am a different person now. The journey made me who I am, and moving back to my hometown would just be the next chapter in that journey.

I think the process of creating things is similar, and it’s often about making choices that feel hard. Removing something from my workbench isn’t the same as never putting it there in the first place. I learned from the process. I moved pieces around. I changed my perspective. I tried. And ultimately, I made a conscious decision to remove some of it.

How do I apply this to my creative process? I separate idea-generation from decision-making.

I like writing my drafts on a notebook with a fountain pen because once it’s on paper, it’s there to stay. It exists physically and there is no backspace key on a notebook. I started doing this after seeing an interview of writer Neil Gaiman by Tim Ferris, and it really changed my creative process.

The notebook and fountain pen force me to go through that drafting journey, with all its nooks and crannies and detours. Once I edit, I move to the computer, and I optimise: I don’t delete stuff, I leave it out on the side. It stays in the notebook. Even if I wasn’t sure it was a great idea, I wrote it down. This allowed my mind to wander free of judgement from my internal censor.

The draft (on the notebook) is my journey through thinking the idea, feeding it. The editing (on the computer) is making decisions from that journey, and making it a story.

Editing requires a lot of decision-making energy, that’s why it’s important to make it a separate step. As Cal Newport describes in Deep Work, it is like a battery. Once empty, you have to wait for it to recharge (for me, usually the next day).

Deleting Something Is Not Failure

There’s one powerful phrase that guides me: “To know if you need to delete it, first you have to write it down”¹.

Once you free yourself from self-censorship, you have to trust that deleting is part of the process. You didn’t waste time, you are saving yourself some work.

When you build a sculpture, you have to delete stuff. You don’t have a choice. Otherwise, your sculpture is just some big rock that you didn’t touch.

Your draft, that’s your block of granite. You have to sculpt it. Shape it. Scrap some stuff.

Unlike with sculpting, in most cases, if you remove too much you can always change it back. Or shape it into something else. Or better. Start over. With a different block of granite.

Ideas are like hair. If you cut them, they will grow back². Cutting your ideas is how you refine them.

This process of making decisions and deleting stuff can make you feel like you are compromising your voice. But it’s still you holding the pen. And remember that you are never creating in a vacuum: your voice is shaped by all the things and people that inspire you and it’s okay to acknowledge it - like Austin Kleon explains in Steal Like an Artist!.

If you are blocked on a project, deleting stuff might be what you need to make progress³.

Why don’t you want to delete that paragraph? Be honest with yourself. Then, ask: “Can I change it later?”. Then, delete it.