Learn to Sit with Uncertainty

Before my involuntary itchy break, I was working on revisions of a novel I have been pounding away at for several years now. As I have been getting back to writing I've been thinking about an article I read in the Times a few months ago about the Sagrada Familia Cathedral and how it is still unfinished after 100 years. The author, Melissa Kirsh, turns this thought into a meditation on sitting with uncertainty and incompleteness in your life. She brings in a quote from Keats on "negative capability," which is “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” And then she brings it around to this beautiful thought:

"But a capability to sit with uncertainty doesn’t mean you’re not still working. Indeed, Keats saw negative capability as the hallmark of “a Man of Achievement.” You’re in the middle of doing the dishes, not leaving them to grow mold. I told someone recently that I needed some worry resolved in order to be OK, and that until it was, I might experience moments of happiness, but I wouldn’t truly rest. I realized immediately how silly this sounded." Kirsh, Melissa "Unfinished Business" in The NY Times "The Morning" newsletter June 13, 2026

And then I was reading Chuck Palahniuk's writing book Consider This (subscribe to get the review in your inbox in the next few weeks) where he writes this in a chapter about tension:

"Our job is to challenge and confront the reader, but we can't do any of that if we're so tension-averse that we can't create suspense or conflict...This means being able to tolerate the incomplete thing. Whether it’s the unfinished first draft or the events confronting the characters. In regard to the unfinished draft, Tom Spanbauer used to say, “The longer you can be with the unresolved thing, the more beautifully it will resolve itself.” Palahniuk, Chuck - Consider This, "Tension" chapter

And so I've been thinking about how essential it is for writers to sit with things unfinished, but also to find it within themselves to push through to the end. Here's some areas where I've considered sitting with uncertainty recently...

• leaving a draft to come back to later when you realized that you don't have the skills to complete it
• leaving parts of a novel undone when you don't have a good idea to move on to the part you are excited about.
• tolerance of good enough for now when doing revisions
• leaving a sentence unfinished at the end of the day so you can pick back up in the middle a la Hemingway

What do you think? Are there other places in your work you are sitting with uncertainty right now? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.

Photo Credit: Parishioners at the 75th anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone of the Sagrada Família in 1957. Credit: Joseph Brangulí i Soler. via La Sagrada Familia website. Image cropped. https://blog.sagradafamilia.org/en/saint-joseph-an-important-day-for-the-sagrada-familia/