Finishing What You Start

Right now, I'm struggling to finish the Bloodlines series. There's many reasons for my slowdown that I won't get into here today. I'm going to focus on one, and it's the one that afflicts all writers if we're honest with ourselves.

Fear.

Some call it Imposter Syndrome. Some call it Fear of Failure. What ever you call it, whatever it is, we all have it. It's the fear that the art we've made isn't any good.

And [deity of your choice] help us, we want that reassurance that we aren't wasting our time by spending hours scribbling or typing words. Are they good? Are they crap? Who knows? We sure as hell don't.

Newbies especially want that reassurance. And never is that more evident when one of them approaches me with a few pages or a couple of chapters and wants me to read them. My standard response has become "Show it to me when it's finished."

The general response is along what you would expect if I had asked to ass-fuck their grandmas with a dildo instead.

The few who get over being initially offended ask, "Why do you need to see the whole thing?"

Writing fiction is storytelling. I don't know if your story has the basics. A protagonist. A beginning, a middle, and an end. A certain je ne sais quoi that ensnares me regardless of your typos and bad grammar. A few pages of pretty writing tells me nothing.

That's like asking me what your bread tastes like when we are standing in your field of uncut wheat. It's meaningless and irrelevant.

Usually at this point, the newbies have the same look in their eyes that they would if I'd just hit their dog with my car, got out, and kicked the corpse a couple of times for good measure.

So I gently ask, "Have you finished anything? Another novel? A short story perhaps?"

I'm still waiting for my first yes. Hell, I'm still waiting for one of these newbies to send me their completed novel.

And I think that's the hardest part of this art form. The part that separates the real writers from the wannabes. You have to finish what you start. Sure, that first novel may be a total piece of shit (mine sure was), but so what?

The real question to consider--did you have fun doing it?

But first, you have to finish that story before you'll ever know if it was fun.

Finish Things

I've heard this advice from a lot of long-term pro writers I respect. Dean Wesley Smith repeats this piece quite frequently under Heinlein's Rules of Writing. But I don't think it really sunk into my brain until Neil Gaiman posted a picture of this phrase written in Sharpie on his hand. And I was reminded of the term this week on Will Wheaton's blog.

This summer, I've been sending quite a bit of work to my formatter and my cover artist. My formatter commented that she'd been backed up the last couple of months and this wasn't her normal busy period. I replied that I couldn't vouch for any other writers, but I was simple trying to finish all the projects I started three years ago.

Yep, in ten days, it will be three years since the insane odyssey of trying to sell our house in Texas and moving to Ohio began. Things went wrong. Then more things went wrong. And then a few more.

Through it all, I kept writing. I just didn't have the focus to edit, much less publish, what I was writing. On top of that, I was so stressed out I'd get stuck on one piece, so I'd set it aside and start something else. That happened a lot.

So I've got a ton of idea pieces sitting on my hard drive in various states of completion. I'm trying to finish them as fast as I can. And I'm keeping other people busy and paid, too.

And the spice, aka words and money, must flow!

Seriously though, the older more experienced pro writers are right. The hard part is finishing what you start. I had life shit hold me back. Don't let your own fear hold you back.