Have you heard of Zentangle?

It’s a meditative art form of repeated lines and circles (tangles) which results in some beautiful pieces.

My friend, who is a Certified Zentangle Teacher, told me one of Zentangle’s philosophies is “The Elegance of Limits.”

Many completed Zentangle pieces are no larger than 3×3-inches or 4×4.

The elegance of limits.

It applies to so much, don’t you think?

Fine art, writing, music.

Life.

Space is always a limiting factor, unless, I suppose, you’re a skywriter.

But then you’re limited by another factor: how much gasoline you have in your tank; and another, how much tumbling your stomach can take.

Artists look for the limits in order to highlight what’s important.

Imagine a chef cooking all the things she’s ever learned to cook for just one meal.

No one would know what the highlight of the meal was.

In fact, no one would be able to eat their way through everything.

What a waste.

Imagine a musician throwing all those little black and white notes onto her sheet music.

Cacophany.

Definitely not elegant.

Imagine an architect designing a house with all the design styles she knows.

Ugh.

For the love of elegance, don’t use all the things you have at your disposal.

Therein lies the elegance.

The same goes for writing.

When I begin writing a story, I think of potential themes.

There are a lot of themes.

Then, add in the nuances to support all those themes and you’ve got a recipe for potential disaster, a jumble of words.

Readers won’t know what they’re supposed to be concerned about.

I’m rewriting a story now that I just can’t let go.

I started writing it ten-plus years ago, and got serious and “finished” it about five years ago.

But after querying it for a bit, I received no interest.

I put it aside while I worked on other stories.

Then I revisited it.

Holy Smokes.

I realized I had tried to put in all the things.

All the themes, everything I wanted to say, all the stories of the supporting characters.

It was four stories in one.

It was as if I didn’t expect to write another story for the rest of my life and had to unleash everything in this one, poor, unsuspecting tale.

I thought I was making the story better, deeper, more meaningful by adding so much.

I didn’t know any better.

I had a lightbulb moment that was essentially, “the elegance of limits.”

Choose a north-star theme and then maybe one or two more to orbit around it.

It’s more about, “Hey, what can I do within this space to highlight something special” rather than “Let me throw everything I know into this.”

Restrain yourself.

Save some of those great ideas for another project, another holiday, another event, another vacation.

Where can you apply the elegance of limits?

Enjoy your week,

~ Gail

(Tick tock)

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