On October 11, 2012, E.S. Ivy wrote, As to why do I finish some (projects) and not others, and why do I fail to finish: I have found that I’m much more likely to finish a project for another person than I am for myself. For example, when I was expecting my first child, I crocheted a dress for my cousin’s baby with a similar due date, but got nothing so elaborate made for my own. :)I noticed a similarity in Lark’s situation. 


My difficulty in finishing, or even progressing, in a book is the fear of not getting it “perfect.” 


I know those are two of my hurdles, but I haven’t quite figured out how to gracefully sail over them yet.

Two topics here:

∙ The ease of finishing something for someone else and the difficulty when the project is just for oneself;

∙ Fear of imperfection.

These are deep-seated issues that many of us struggle with our whole lives. I do! I don’t know how to discuss either one without getting a tad psychological.

When I was little the worst criticism that could be leveled at anyone was that he or she was selfish. If you were selfish, you were evil.

In E. S. Ivy’s example, I suppose it could be called selfish to finish a dress for her own baby because, while the baby may enjoy it, the chief delight will probably belong to E. S. Ivy, in seeing how adorable the baby looks and in feeling pride for having created the effect. And for having created the baby! Mixed in (I am completely guessing here) is the amazing luck of having a healthy child. Good fortune can be hard to tolerate when other people are suffering – and other people somewhere are always suffering.

But E. S. Ivy didn’t cause anybody’s misery.

Don’t get me wrong. Making others suffer so that we can enjoy is terrible. Ignoring the troubles of others for our own comfort stinks. Real selfishness is bad. But we’re not talking about that kind of selfishness. We’re talking about pleasure that harms no one and may help some.

Let’s stick with the baby dress example, but let’s make the crocheter someone other than E. S. Ivy, maybe a character named Barbara in a story, and let’s think about the happiness Barbara’s baby’s dress, created as a selfish act, may bring other people. Barbara takes the baby – Carlie – with her when she goes shopping at the supermarket, and the sight of Carlie in her dress makes the cashier’s day. The cashier’s last customer was horrible, but Carlie wipes out the bad taste. For the whole rest of the day the image of the baby in the great dress makes the cashier smile. That night she even falls asleep with the image in her mind.

In a larger sense, someone else’s good fortune is a blessing for sufferers, a promise that things can get better, a comfort that even if matters are going very badly for me, some are thriving. Not every sufferer will be comforted. Not every sufferer will believe that his lot can improve. But some will. Some will feel the load get a little lighter because of a cute baby in a sweet dress and a happy mother.

When it comes to art the case is even stronger. Creating art for our own pleasure benefits everyone else. The major writers, artists, musicians create out of an urgency that has nothing to do with the greater good. I very much doubt that Monet, for example, painted his water lilies for the benefit of sixth graders on a class trip to an art museum. But some of those eyes are opened, and some of those children live expanded lives forever after.

When I write – when most of the writers I know write – it’s to tell myself a story or to tell a story to the child I used to be. If I tried for an altruistic purpose, to please my readers, I’d be lost. The idea is too vague. One reader likes one thing, another likes something else. So I write selfishly to please myself, and the story goes out into the world and turns out, sometimes, to be just what a reader needs.

Naturally, we have to finish our stories for that to happen, and we have to show them to at least one other person, because keeping them entirely to ourselves may be a little selfish in the bad way, because no one else is allowed to benefit from the tale we discovered.

Finishing is going to benefit someone besides you. If nothing else, the glow of accomplishment will spread cheer.

If your story is published, a wider audience will be enriched. If it isn’t, your friends and family, your teacher, your writers’ group will be the lucky ones. They’ll learn something about you. They’ll read a story the rest of the world won’t have access to, which will make it precious.

On to perfectionism, which takes me back to my childhood, too, and to my poor mother, who was criticized mercilessly by her mother and her two sisters. She became the universe’s biggest perfectionist, trying to do everything exactly right and escape judgment.

So maybe that’s the root of a lot of perfectionism, because criticism hurts!

I caught it from her. If someone comes to my house I want it to look great. Two fragments of tile are missing in my bathroom, and they bother me. When I go out, I fuss with my looks, even if I’m going to be with people who’ve known me for eons. When I’m with a group I want my every word to be clever. This is a burden, and I should get over it.

But when I write I’m not burdened, or not so much. I know the impossibility of perfection, which is what I say in Writing Magic, that there’s no such thing as a perfect book. The best I can hope for is the best I can do at this time. Maybe in a year I’ll do better.

I admit that when I’ve finished writing a scene I go back and fiddle with it before moving on, especially if it’s a good scene and I like it. It’s fun to tweak it to make it funnier or more exciting. And it’s much easier than to move forward into the next scene, which may be hard to write, which may drive me crazy with its imperfections and may even make me temporarily blocked.

Some of you aren’t like me. Some of you blaze bravely on and save the tweaking for the second draft. Good for you!

Even I move on eventually, though. Because I’m darned if the book is going to peter out. It will limp or gallop to the end so that I can start revising and start making it the best imperfect story I can.

Here are a few prompts:

• When I think of Monet, I often think of one of my favorite poems, “Monet Refuses the Operation” by Lisel Mueller. This prompt is just to read the poem and enjoy. Here’s a link: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/236810. If you read it, please let me know what you think.

• The first time I made a beef-and-barley soup, I decided to go to the movies while the soup simmered. I came back to fire trucks, an apartment full of smoke, and only ashes where soup should have been. My second attempt was delicious, but my husband’s spoon made an odd, clinking sound in the bowl, and he fished out my key chain and all my keys, dripping but sterile. Use a cooking disaster of yours – or any non-cooking mishap – or borrow mine to write a story or a scene on the theme of perfectionism. If perfectionism turns out not to be the theme, don’t worry. We’re really after story.

• Develop two characters, one selfish in a way that benefits many others, and one selfish in a way that benefits no one. Put them in opposition to each other. Write what happens in a scene or a story.

Have fun, and save what you write!

On the evening of Thursday, October 25th, I’m going to give a talk at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Here’s the link, where they ask you to reserve your seats: http://www.carnegielibrary.org/teens/events/programs/behindthebook/. I would be delighted to meet any of you in person.

Just want to say I’ve been listening to the lectures by Brandon Sanderson and finding them helpful and informative and delightfully geeky. He has my number when he talks about discoverers.

On May 30, 2012, Lark wrote, Gail, have you ever done a post on the motives of writing something? I was reading an article in The Writer’s Digest Handbook to Novel Writing (superb articles in there, btw) about what your motives are in writing a novel. It struck me that the only 2 stories I’ve finished I’ve had specific motives behind them– i.e., my short story last year had to be written for writing club (which is a weak motive) and a parody I wrote for the Hunger Games was for my best friend’s birthday– I wrote 7,700 words in 2 days. Whew! (Slightly better motive.) I wasn’t thinking about publishing, or writing a certain number or pages/words/etc. And when I did NaNo last year my motive wasn’t finish my novel, it was write 30,000 words. (That’s probably the reason why I didn’t finish my NaNo novel). When I set out writing a story and I think, I want to get this published, it is guaranteed that I don’t finish it.

And two days ago, flowerprincess wrote in a similar vein, I write historical fiction, and I usually start a story with tons of fire and energy (and very little research) as soon as the idea is developed enough. But by the time I’ve reached what seems to be the beginning of the middle, it flops. I just can’t write anymore. Sometimes it’s because I realize that I didn’t research enough, but sometimes I just find that I have absolutely no workable plot (I’m definitely a character writer). To put this problem in perspective: I am sixteen in a month, but I haven’t finished a draft of a story since I was nine! What can I do so that I don’t keep stopping before the story actually gets started?

I read two questions here, one about finishing and one about writing in the first place. They’re both mysterious.

To get philosophical: People are like locked doors and we may spend our entire lives looking for the key – to ourselves! We have more access to our innards than anyone else. We know what we’re thinking and feeling, and yet… We may have no clue about why we can’t lose a few pounds or quit smoking or not get angry when a certain person says almost anything or finish a story, or why we even start a story in the first place. Sometimes our friends and family can diagnose us better than we can – and vice versa. We may understand exactly why our friend Pamela bites her nails, although she has no idea.

I can tell you why I write: to tell myself a story, because I love books, because I have an itch to be creative that I just must scratch. And why I finish: because I am stubborn and because it feels too awful to fail – it’s intolerable (although at some point I may have to tolerate it). But I can’t come up with answers behind these. I have no idea why I want to tell myself a story or why I’m so stubborn.

So here’s an early prompt: Ask yourself the same questions. Why do you write? Why do you finish your stories or fail to finish them? Why do you finish some and not others? Your responses, regardless of how confused they are, may help you, may guide you in your revisions and your new stories. I would appreciate it if you’d post what you come up with, too, because your answers may help other writers who read the blog.

I’ve finished every book I started – sort of. In thinking about this post I realized that the skeletons of unfinished stories pave the length of almost every one of my books. When I started Fairest, for example, I thought it was going to be about the unrequited love of the gnome zhamM for Aza. Couldn’t do it. There isn’t even a ghost of this in the published book. So the specter of that story is haunting the ether somewhere. In an earlier version of what used to be called Beloved Elodie, Elodie’s mother falls under a spell that makes her totally greedy, that makes her prefer a golden statue of her daughter to the living, breathing girl. I loved it. It was powerful and horrifying. But I couldn’t do anything with it, so it’s hanging out with love-smitten zhamM.

If the problem is that your main story thread peters out, you may find it helpful to assume that wasn’t your real story. Look at what you’ve got. Think about where else you might go with it. Some story choices narrow the future possibilities, which is good when you’re near the end but not at the beginning or the middle. Did you choose directions that limited your characters’ options? Can you see other paths that excite you? This is not failure! This is finding the actual story.

In my case, I always have to simplify to write the book I can write. In my dark hours I feel bad about this and disappointed in myself. But the rest of the time I’m proud and happy that I finished, and I think my books are pretty good.

Obviously we’re all different. Some people do better with a stick and some with honey. Lark, you seem to do best when you set goals for yourself. So do it! NaNoWriMo is coming up. This time make it your goal to type “The End” when the month is over. If it helps, you can say that I demanded it. Write stories for the birthdays of all your friends and relatives. And your pets! Write a story for the major and minor holidays. (Halloween is coming up.)

flowerprincess, in the cases when more research would get you going again, I’d suggest undertaking the research. What you discover may give you a detail that will move your story forward, as has happened to me more than once.

Lots of us work well with small time goals and rewards. I’ll often tell myself that if I write for half an hour I can take a break. Not too much later I demand another half hour of myself. I also have a time goal for the day’s writing. In doing this, I’m not thinking about finishing my book, but underneath I know that if I put in enough time and write enough notes and think enough, I’ll get there. In fact, worrying about finishing may be a distraction. Just write. Just follow the story. Face the ending when you close in on it.

I see two options if the idea of being published gets in the way. One is, don’t think about it; don’t make that your goal. The other has two parts. The first is to imagine yourself published. Imagine a call from your agent to say that your book has been accepted by a publisher and the editor wants to call you to talk about how wonderful it is and how it could become even greater. You can go on to imagine all the stages that follow, the editorial letter and the edited manuscript, you revising, the book in bound galleys, the early reviews, the book in bookstores. The second part is to imagine your book rejected. Think about how bad you feel, how you wallow in misery for, maybe, a couple of weeks. And then you recover (I did, many times) and find that there’s Life After Rejection. And you send the novel out again and resume writing your current project. Then you can return to the first image of acceptance. The idea with this approach is to take the fear and trembling out of the publishing notion. If you live with it, its power will diminish.

Here are two prompts:

∙ Write a ghost story. A life cut short is like an unfinished story. Imagine a character who dies young and have the story be about the life he didn’t have. Bring him in as a ghost.

∙ An unsolved mystery is also like an unfinished story. Dr. Ellen Imoldo is a veterinarian who, in the 1980s, claimed to have discovered a serum that would significantly increase intelligence in dogs. She disappeared along with her notes and her vials. Your main character has found a clue. Solve the mystery of her disappearance and the serum.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Last week welliewalks posted to the guestbook on my website that she hadn’t been able to post directly on the blog, so I asked you all, and the problem seems to be more widespread than just one person, although not universal. The trouble isn’t with us, says David, my high-tech husband, so we can’t fix it. If you can’t get through, just post your comment on the guestbook (following the link on the right to the website) and I’ll approve it there and move it to the blog. I love to hear from you!

On March 29, 2011, Erica wrote, Okay, so I was wondering, I always have tons of different story ideas (like notebooks full of them) but I can never finish them. At this point I have one short story done and one picture book rough draft for my English class. I can think in my head of almost exactly how I want it to end but I can never get it out on paper. My mom thinks that it’s because if I finish something then I will feel the need to do something with it and she thinks that it’s because I’m afraid people won’t like it. Whatever the reason I don’t know how to fix it. Help?

Many are afflicted with unfinished-itis, and the reasons vary, so here are some possibilities:

Erica’s mother suggested one. Finishing is the first step toward exposing your work to criticism and even rejection in the sometimes cold, cruel publishing world. Your fingers may curl into fists at the prospect, and fists can’t type.

A solution to this may be to find friends, relatives, teachers, librarians, a critique group, to show your stories to even before they’re finished. Encouragement may push you to completion. The writers in particular may have useful ideas about where to go next in your tale. Showing at an early stage can reduce the fear of criticism, if not wipe it out entirely. You’re in an early stage. Naturally your story needs work. Helpful advice is welcome.

And just a word about unhelpful advice and unhelpful criticism. See it for what it is, unhelpful, useless, irrelevant. If somebody reads what you’ve got and says something like, “I hope you have other talents, dear,” ignore and do not show your writing to this person again. To yourself you can say, Yeah, and how many books have you written, Mister or Missus?

Unhelpful advice can masquerade as the helpful sort and sometimes it’s hard to tell one from the other. Someone might say, “You should try to make your prose more lyrical.” Press for specifics. “What do you mean?” you ask. “Where in my story is lyricism needed?” If your critic can explain, then this may be useful, but if she says, “That’s just what I think,” put it in the unhelpful category.

You may be someone who needs a deadline. If you’re not writing a piece that’s due in school and no publisher is clamoring for your work, you may not feel the urgency, and when another idea comes along, you may jump ship. So set a deadline. If you need to, enlist a friend to help you stick to your writing. Whether you meet the deadline or not, you’ll get more done, and you can always set a new deadline. I think this is why NaNoWriMo is so terrific. It pushes you. Even if you don’t make the word count, you’ve written a lot.

You may not have found the right story, the one that finishes itself. If you keep writing, you’ll get there.

The plodding nature of writing gets to you. You start resisting writing the details. Your story is magical, thrilling. Why do you have to mention that your main character’s feet hurt or that her best friend has a dab of catsup on her chin? And why can’t you just tell the reader that the friend is loyal and also illogical? Why do you also have to demonstrate it? You want to put in the broad strokes, the essence of your story, and be done with it. Eventually you get so sick of the details that you give up and start something shiny and new. Or you write down ideas, which don’t have to be detailed at all.

The remedy here is to limit the task. Write a scene. Don’t think about how many scenes remain. After you’ve written one, write another, little dotted lines along the road of your narrative.

If you despise writing the scenes and can’t bring yourself to complete any of them, but you adore coming up with ideas and planning out stories, you may be more of a storyteller than a novelist. Or graphic novels may be the right form for you.
   
You don’t want the characters you love to suffer, so you get stuck. I suspect this is afflicting me now in the second mystery. I love Elodie, and I have to make some awful things happen to her, so I’m progressing at the speed of an inchworm. Since I’m facing this myself, it’s hard to know what the solution is. In my case it’s probably just inching along, and possibly that will work for you, too. Pat yourself heartily on the back at the end of each completed page.

Or jump right in and bring the dreadful event about. Then write up to it, if you’re not at that point in your story. If you don’t even know what the tragedy will be yet, write a scene in which your main endures misery, which may not be the misery you eventually use. See how he responds. Decide what helps him pull through if he does pull through. Then, when you get to the actual crisis you’ll have prepared yourself. I think I’m going to try this as soon as I finish wrtiting this post!

You haven’t explored any of your ideas sufficiently to know which ones are keepers. Pick three of your ideas or your petered-out drafts. In notes ask yourself questions. What lit you up when you started? What turned you off? What will it take to bring back the spark? (No negativity allowed.) How can you define your main character so you want to have a long-term relationship with her? What fascinates you about her? Ask yourself about setting, plot, other characters. Quit note-writing and move over to the story when you find yourself eager to start.

What I’m suggesting are just ideas, which may not work for you. The most important thing is to keep writing, whether you finish something next month or three years from now.

These prompts need some setting up:

Right now I’m riding home from New York on a commuter train, a wonderful place for observation. Most of the seats face the backs of the seats ahead, like in an airplane, but some, the less desirable ones, where I am, face the fronts of the seats ahead without good legroom between. I’m in an aisle seat. There’s a middle seat and a window seat next to me, across from me the same. When I sat down at Grand Central where the train originates, the only other occupant of our six-seat grouping was a man in the window seat facing me, who had placed his briefcase on the seat facing him, a little piggishly, I think, but it’s not interfering with my comfort so I don’t care.

After a few minutes a woman sits across from me and we arrange our legs so they don’t touch. She puts her huge purse on the seat between her and the man, also a little piggishly. Then a woman comes along and wants to sit in the other window seat, the one next to me, with one empty seat between us. She asks if the briefcase is mine and I say no. The man across from her says it’s his and doesn’t move it or offer to move it. How selfish! The woman doesn’t ask him to move it either and rides awkwardly on the (slightly) raised area between the window seat and the middle seat next to me. How meek! I resist the temptation to tell the man to be a gentleman and the woman to grow a spine.

(Of course they may each have had reasonable reasons for their behavior.) So here come the prompts:

•    Write a scene from the childhood of each passenger that suggests how they became their future adult selves.

•    He is King Oogu the Terrible, ruler of the kingdom of Ploog (or more serious names), and she is a member of a rebel group plotting to overthrow him. Write a scene. How will her meekness play out? How will his selfishness?

•    He is Oogu, dictator of a small republic. She is a diplomat given the task of reforming him. Write a scene.

•    As young people, they oppose each other on their school debating team. Pick a debate topic you know something about. Write a debate with him winning; then rewrite it with her winning.

•    They’re in high school. He asks her to the junior prom. Write what happens.

•    Both are fleeing the devastation caused by Queen Ooga the Awful. He’s the son of a peasant, she the daughter of a scholar. Circumstances throw them together, both in danger. They will survive only if they cooperate. Write a scene.

•    Invent any other situations you like for these two.

Have fun and save what you write!