An easy bad habit to fall into as a writer is not finishing what you start. On the whole, I do decently at staying out of that particular trap. But at the moment, I'm feeling like I've let a few too many unfinished things pile up. I've got a half-dozen or so stories that I've finished drafts of but never gotten to a point that I was happy enough with to kick out the door. I've got a novelette that I received beta reader feedback on that I really need to get working on the next draft of since one of the people who will be reading my next draft of it is working with a small time window. I've got two beginnings to stories that I wrote over Memorial Day weekend when I was too brain-fried to do anything other than work from a blank page. And I've got an idea I love and am dying to work on where all I have are a few notes in an email.
That's a whole lot of things that need attention. The only way I'm going to be able to get through them, though, is to chip away at the stack a bit at a time. Even with having a revising-party day in the near future, there's no way I can tackle all of those things at once.
When I've got a whole pile of stuff to deal with like this, in any area of my life, the best thing I can do is prioritize the items inside it.
The only one of these that has any time urgency is revising the novelette. I told a fellow writer that I'd send him a new draft by the end of the weekend so he could review it when he thought he would be most likely to have time. So that moves to the top of the pile. After that, somewhat contrary to what might be considered a best practice, I plan to write the brand new story idea that I have the email notes on. There may be a small element here of chasing the new "shiny" thing, but I've already let it sit for several days while I worked on more urgent tasks. So I don't feel completely as if I'm being flighty in my decision making here. It's a story that I think has a chance to turn out really well, playing to some of my strengths as a writer and drawing from some of my own recent life experiences. So once I get the novelette revised, I'll work on that.
With the revising day in early July, if I have time between finishing the newest story and the revising day, I'll circle back to the two pieces I started Memorial Day weekend. Both are ones I'd like to return to but I'm also not feeling "Oh my gosh I have to write these Right. Now." about them either. And I've put little enough work into either of them so far that if they stay fragments for now, I won't be that irritated at having set aside a small chunk of work.
Then revising day will come around and I'll pick two or three stories to get ready for their next step (either critique or market submission, depending on where they stand right now). At that point I'll probably still have a few loose ends, but I should have a lot fewer than I have now. If I can get the decks good and cleared, maybe I'll "treat" myself with a challenge in July or August to write, polish, and submit several new stories.
Do you have trouble finishing what you start? Are there a lot of unfinished stories on your hard drive? If so, how do they make you feel? Do they bother you or is having pieces of stories set aside which you expect to come back to "some day" simply part of your own personal writing process?
I've got about 50 stories in stages between 1st drafts to 4th drafts. With seven out the door, that means I have a hell of a lot to clean up this summer, which is my summer writing goal. It's tough, especially when you're looking at stuff you wrote six months ago and sort of dislike. Still, I've gotta turn KFKD off and get down to it.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm having the same trouble getting motivated to work on the oldest stuff. And there's at least one where I love some aspects -- character dynamics, etc. -- but the plot is a royal mess and I've got not the first clue how to fix it yet. In a way, that one might be the hardest because I want to not break the parts I love while fixing the broken parts.
DeleteLet's see: there's the memoir I started in 1995, a book of writing essays that's been in the works since January 2003, another memoir I began in 2004, a collection of short stories from 2005 and 2006, the novel I wrote in 2008 and rewrote in 2009, yet another memoir from 2010, the novel about a pair of runners in 2011, and the current very shiny book about my own running that repeatedly taps me on the shoulder. Does that count as having a few too many unfinished projects? YES! I'd better get to work.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by, Nita!
DeleteI remember sitting with you last fall as you worked on the novel with the pair of runners at Colin's!
Good luck with working through those. Remember that there's no way to finish them all at once.
I've got years of unfinished stories and novels laying around. Most of the time, I'm just fine with it. Once in awhile, it bothers me, but I think it's just my writing process to have several projects going at once.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by, Esther.
DeleteLearning how you work best is absolutely key. I know another writer who says that he has dozens of story fragments sitting around and every now and then he'll have an idea about how to link some of them together and -- Boom! -- a story arises. Sounds sort of similar to how things work for you.
Thanks for your comments!
I've lost count of how many unfinished projects I have. It doesn't really bother me. I've come to accept it as part of the way I work. I'll start a project, work on it for a while, then for one reason or another, I'll put it aside. I do eventually complete some of those projects; one story sat waiting for three years before I finished it.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear that you've got a way of working that's going well for you. In the end, that's all any of us can hope for.
DeleteThanks for stopping by and commenting!