Some stories are like those friends who say, “We should totally hang out,” and then vanish like they got drafted by NASA. You try calling them back—chapter one, chapter two, that weird half-scene you wrote on a bus—and the story just rolls over, shows you its spine, and pretends it doesn’t know you. That’s when you whisper the secret mantra of the spiritually exhausted writer: “Alright, buddy. Do your thing. I’m out.”
People act like quitting a story is a crime. Like the Draft Police will show up at your door with a citation: “You abandoned a narrative at 38% completion. Please pay this emotional fine.” Relax. Walking away is a skill. A craft move. Like when chefs throw out a sauce because it tastes like regret. Or when you stop dating someone because they yell at baristas.
The trick is recognizing when the story has turned its back. There’s this weird moment—you sit down, open the doc, and the story’s just… there. Staring at you like a lamp that isn’t plugged in but somehow still judging your life choices. You tap a sentence, it doesn’t even twitch. Just gives you the vibe of, “Buddy, stop. I clocked out. Stop touching me.”
I once tried to force a novella to keep going for three months. Three. Months. The thing fought me harder than a toddler refusing vegetables. It kept dropping hints—awkward scenes, flat jokes, characters who had the emotional range of expired yogurt. I ignored all of it because I thought persistence was noble. Spoiler: persistence was stupid. The story wasn’t a struggling plant. It was a corpse. A polite, floral-scented corpse, but still.
There’s this idea floating around that every abandoned story is a personal failure. Nah. Some stories are just hit-and-run lessons. They show up, smack you with a weird metaphor, teach you one tiny technique, and then wander off into the fog like a raccoon philosopher.
Learning to step away is like learning the perfect time to leave a terrible party. Too early, and you feel rude. Too late, and you end up holding someone’s pet lizard while they explain cryptocurrency. But somewhere in the middle—right at the moment you sense the room going stale—you slip out gracefully. No guilt. No drama. No lizards.
Nobody mentions this, probably because it sounds unprofessional, but half-finished drafts sometimes kick harder than the polished ones. They’ve got that garage-sale energy—odd scraps, a character who feels like they’re hiding contraband, a location that smells faintly like wet socks and ambition. You flip through the pieces thinking, “Did I even write this, or was I sleep-texting?” These pieces are gifts. They’re like spare parts from IKEA that don’t belong to anything but might still fix a chair.
And honestly, sometimes the story just leaves you first. No note. No goodbye. All you find is a sentence fragment on the kitchen counter, something cryptic like “the lantern hummed…,” and now you’re supposed to interpret that like it’s ancient prophecy.
Let it go. Let it wander. There’s no point chasing a story that clearly faked its own death. Go write something that actually texts you back.
Leaving a story isn’t some dramatic slow-motion exit. It’s more like: you blink, shrug, mutter “yeah, whatever dude,” and slide your chair toward something that at least pretends to cooperate. The whole vibe is very “oh crap, I forgot I have clothes molding in the washer”—zero romance, all practicality.
And here’s the magic trick nobody mentions: the abandoned stories usually come back. When they feel like it. When you’ve moved on. When you’re in the middle of something else and suddenly the old draft kicks down the door yelling, “HEY, I HAVE AN ENDING NOW.” Rude, but comforting.
So yeah. Not every story wants to be finished.
Some only want to be found halfway, wink at you mysteriously, and then saunter off to annoy some other writer.
Grace is knowing when to wave back.
And then go eat snacks.
Bio: Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. His poetry has appeared in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and more. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish and has a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. His oil paintings have been published in The Hooghly Review. You can follow his writing on Substack here.
