7.21.2009

Where to Start, When to Finish

I’ve been thinking about this writing thing for a few weeks now, how I’ve let it slip away, yet again. I ask myself why I do this, which is typically the close of the cycle – get the itch to write, write for a few weeks or months, begin to write less, stop completely in a short span of time, question why I’ve done this after a month or two or three has passed since my last turn at the keyboard. Some people learn from experience, others are only engaged enough to repeat.

Regardless, this question, this eternal “why” that keeps coming back up in my life as a writer, never really gets a solid, honest answer. I’ll drop a “I was really busy and just go out of the swing” on my subconscious to keep it quiet for the time being. But those, and the other answers thrown out to push back both question an my self-loathing, are less than the cliché of hollow. They are lies. This time I decided to answer the question honestly. And what I came up with was both shockingly simple and frustratingly inane.

Where to start. When to finish.

This was the most simplistic expression of my answer, and the first, that came to mind if I allowed myself to be completely honest. Deconstructing each portion of the answer, however, was slightly more complex, however bordering on commonplace.

Starting anything new is hard. A new workout routine. A new career. When it comes to writing, initial ideas may germinate quickly and furiously. But there is a significant amount of work and dedication required to take those ideas and expand them into something worth taking the time to write or expect someone to read. And in that work there is an equally weighted emotional investment. An investment that I may not be willing, or able, to outlay coupled with the fact that the investment is tied to the crafting of something engaging and personal, regardless of the topic. If it is neither, I have then failed more deeply than if starting a new workout routine. It’s easier to just not bother starting.

Finishing is just as difficult. Should this be the last drink? Should I call this relationship finally over? On the rare occasion that I would bother to take the risk to start a new work, I would be plagued throughout with how to finish, and not just the story as a whole. How to finish the first chapter. How to finish the outline. How to finish the important conversation in that would lead to next plot point. How to finish, in essence, everything in the work. Because with finishing, each point of completion, I would be that much closer to taking the work to the final step – putting it out there to be consumed and critiqued. With the investment required, why would one do such a thing? It is simpler to walk through life with the knowledge that you posses great ideas than to actually share them with anyone and be told differently.

Now that I understand and acknowledge both of these concepts in regards to myself as a writer the correction is simple.

Start every idea, regardless of its merit. And know when to quit.