Knowing When to Pivot
In the Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken, the famous lines read:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
What follows is a thought piece on how getting stuck on one project—instead of feeling free to switch up and work on what moves—can be difficult. One thing that may surprise people is that the writer Misha Lazzara was working on another novel for about three years, before she pivoted to her first-ever novel idea—that she carried around with her for eight years between undergrad and grad—the one that became Manmade Constellations, available from Blackstone Publishing.
For writers, there’s something to be said for grit. It takes real determination, persistence, routine and dedication to finally finish that novel and prepare it to meet the world.
For most projects, we just need to complete our word count for the day and keep moving forward until completion, even when things get temporarily sticky. But what happens when a project comes to a halt? When persistence turns into avoidance, when routine turns to social media scrolling, so that little or no headway is made toward completion of a work-in-progress?
That’s when it’s time to embrace the pivot. Get pivotal by being pivot-ful. Find your success by being open to oscillation.
I spent three years through a creative writing master’s program and the first year of my MFA program workshopping an historical fiction novel set in sub-Saharan Africa during WWII. It’s a project that requires research, research, and more research. Four years and two-hundred pages (rewritten several times) later, I felt upside down and backwards on how to complete it.
When the pandemic hit in full force in March 2020, I was a year away from graduation, sitting squarely in my mid-thirties, and still trudging through a novel I couldn’t finish. It was then that I pivoted back to my very first novel idea and draft that had sat cold for years. Suddenly, it felt fresh, revisions came easy, the story, characters and settings came to life. For a plethora of reasons, the painstaking work of writing the previous novel melted away, and I finished a major overhaul of the new story while workshopping it through the Summer and Fall. Come October, I sent Manmade Constellations out to literary agents and received a call from Mark Gottlieb within a matter of weeks.
Of course, it’s not only research that trips writers up. Anything can derail progress and wreak havoc on routines, from not understanding a character’s motivations, to personal issues that inherently change us (babies, divorces, death, pandemics), to avoiding a project for no earthly reason except obstinance.
Do I plan on finishing the other novel someday? Yes, I do. Can a good novel require years and years of time, energy and research to complete? Yes, without a doubt. But I realized that the timing wasn’t right for that project, that the pieces weren’t all in place yet. I could have pushed through for another three years. I could have done even more research. But instead, I pivoted and wrote the novel that was ready to come out.
“…once I decided I could let my previous work-in-progress go, I suddenly felt free to use all that pent up creative energy.”
Manmade Constellations by Misha Lazzara (Blackstone Publishing)
Whatever the reason for the stalling, I wish that someone had simply looked me in the eyes and said, “It’s okay to vacillate.” It would have saved me quite a bit of time, guilt and frustration. Sticking solely with a single project or novel through completion—no matter how stagnant—might work for some writers, but once I decided I could let my previous work-in-progress go, I suddenly felt free to use all that pent up creative energy.
This might be old news to the established writers out there who have their eggs in several different baskets, working on a novel, essays and regularly juggle multiple projects. Or to those who know their niches, writing processes and stories so well that they can finish a novel in a matter of months. But for those who have been struggling (and I mean struggling like avoiding the project and spinning your wheels for years, not that typical struggle that begs perseverance and an internet blocker on your phone to complete), ask yourself: is there another project I can throw into the mix? One that’s ready right now? Is there a story that’s begging to come out?
I wonder what would have happened if I had stuck with that WWII story that I wasn’t ready to write. If I hadn’t pivoted and gotten the experience of working on a project with real momentum and inspiration, one that I was able to complete with (relative) proficiency, would I have eventually presumed that I wasn’t capable of writing a novel after all? Would it have sat in a folder in my computer for the next decade collecting proverbial dust? This experience made me wonder about the elusive manuscript that some aspiring writer has been working on in his garage for twenty years without ever completing, or the few languishing chapters an aspiring novelist keeps open on her computer screen (but never works on) because she feels immensely attached to one idea, character or project, and no one has ever said, “It’s time to pivot.”
A Minnesota native, Misha Lazzara is a graduate of North Carolina State University’s MFA program. She first left home for undergrad in East Texas. It was there where Misha met her husband, Adam. Together, they raised three kids in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her non-fiction and poetry works have appeared on multiple platforms such as Entropy Magazine and Poets.org, and she has a short story forthcoming this fall in Opossum literary magazine. Misha was the winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2020. She regularly post poems and other musings on her personal Instagram account, which has reached over 10,000 dedicated followers. Misha’s newsletter, Creative / Seminary, is a weekly ritual for curious people. Her debut novel, Manmade Constellations, is available from Blackstone Publishing.