I’ve recently started swimming laps for fitness. As I cycle back and forth, lulled with regular breathing and the peace of the water, my mind floats back to earlier versions of my swimming self.

• The young girl learning to swim the length of the pool so she could earn a badge that let her use the pool in long, hot summer days.
• A teenager swimming in a cold, bog-lined lake in northern Wisconsin on summer afternoons.
• A mother-to-be relishing brief periods of weightlessness in a YMCA pool in the later months of pregnancy.

Each of those past swimmers shaped the swimmer I am today. I am all of them, and someone different, adding my extended life experiences and well-traveled body into the mix.

How does this apply to writing? Everything I write contributes to who I am, and will be, as a writer.

The same is true for you.

Nothing is wasted, in writing or life

Do you have any abandoned writing projects, unpublished novels or poems, or notebooks of writing sitting around, unused and unread? You’re not alone. We all do—from the distant or recent past.

We can either cling to past writings, or let them go and move on.

It’s easy to become attached to the words we’ve already written. They can weigh us down, like soggy shoes when you’ve fallen into the lake. (Another swimming-related method I learned in childhood.) Let them go, and you’ll go further.

Sometimes we write ourselves onto a new path, leaving our past works behind. We might mine them later, or perhaps they are simply the price we pay to get to our present writing selves. Today’s experiment may develop a skill we’ll use in the future.

Sure, we all want to write with total economy—every word a gem that stays. But I’m willing to bet that no one writes that way. We try things. And we change and evolve.

Nothing deleted is truly wasted.

By internalizing that fact, you free yourself to cut loose those things that aren’t working and to take larger risks.

Give yourself permission to write for fun, for joy.

For yourself.

How will you use this lesson?

Is there something new you’d like to try in writing? If so, what’s stopping you? Not everything you write has to serve a purpose. Write first, then figure out what to do about it.

Conversely, look through old writing kicking around. Is there anything that might serve as a springboard to something new?

Want to go deeper?

Check out the book Heart. Soul. Pen. for insights into mining past experiences in writing. (See my review on YouTube.)

Want to work on your craft? Check out The Writer’s Voice—it has plenty of exercises for stretching and strengthening your voice.