In Chapter 7 of 16 in her 2012 interview, author and food writer Cathy Erway answers "How Do You Evaluate When to Continue a Project and When to Kill It?" Erway notes she is less about killing projects and more about putting them on the back burner or shelf so she can return to them down the road.
Cathy Erway is an author and food writer living in Brooklyn. Her first book, "The Art of Eating In" developed from her blog "Not Eating Out in New York". She earned a BA in creative writing from Emerson College.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: How do you evaluate when to continue a project and when to kill it?
Cathy Erway: Ooh. When to kill a project? It doesn't sit right with me to kill projects. I always like to think that, you know, they're on the back burner and that you can return to them but always change them up and shape them, and they'll evolve too. So in that sense, I don't think, you know--I had this idea of writing an essay collection a while ago. I didn't so much kill it but put it off and, you know, I think it'll probably be better in the long run that I did that. If I ever get to finishing it, that is. So if you start something, you're never--you're not gonna kill it, I just don't think, it's still with you somehow unfinished in its own, you know, kind of caught in the, just caught in that moment...
Erik Michielsen: File it away. Shelve it but always know that that shelf is accessible.
Cathy Erway: Right, right. Yeah.