Finishing things
Sep. 25th, 2003 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynWhen I look back at my past writings, I invariably see a long legacy of unfinished tales. Whether my original story concept was to write something short, or long, or whether I had no idea where I was going at all, I've got a huge body of fragments, bits and pieces without end, or beginning, or middle.
My typical take on this is that this represents some kind of personal failing on my part. If I were more disciplined/talented/creative/whatever, then instead of writing dozens of fragments, I'd've (yes, that's a real contraction!) written a book or three and some complete short stories. Instead, all I've got are ... fragments.
Except that's not quite true. In fact, I've written at least seven complete short stories -- ten or eleven if I want to throw in a few that are more-or-less standalone, but really intended as part of a larger work.
But seven -- indisputably, at the very least, seven -- that are entirely self-contained; that begin and end and are, in every proper sense, complete.
Seven.
All right, that's not all that many given (a) how long I've been writing and (b) how many things I've started. But seven is still a much larger number than zero. I've been talking about this a bit with Level Head, who has been telling me -- though in the kindest, gentlest possible way -- "Will you please SHUT UP about not being able to finish things, because that's NOT TRUE?" And, it's finally sinking into to my thick skull that, hmm, maybe he has a point.
And moreover: what does "how many things I've started" have to do with it at all? Why do I think of unfinished stories as somehow a negative on the ledger sheet, overbalancing the finished ones?
Let's take another example: art.
Now, as many stories I've started and abandoned, the number of drawings I've started has got to dwarf it by at least a few orders of magnitude. I have sketchbooks stuffed with doodles. I've got inked images with no backgrounds, paintings that I stopped half-way through, digital drawings I quit on -- why, just the other night I started painting a sleeve for practice on clothing, and I'll probably never get around to painting the rest of the figure. I've got oodles of incomplete art. Most of it that even I don't like.
Yet I can't remember ever looking at all the drawings and paintings and sketches and inkings I've done, and thinking "I never finish anything when it comes to drawing." Sometimes I look with pleasure on the ones that got to whatever stage they got to, and sometimes I just look at the handful of paintings I did finish. And think "Hey, that's not bad."
Or I cringe. But I sure don't sit there thinking, "Completing three oil paintings doesn't count, because it's outweighed by the thirty thousand sketches that I never made oil paintings of."
Goodness! That would be insane. All those drawings are practice. I couldn't learn how to finish a piece of art without practicing first. And it's not as though any finished work I did would've been much good without practice.
So why don't I see all those unfinished tales as practice, too?
My typical take on this is that this represents some kind of personal failing on my part. If I were more disciplined/talented/creative/whatever, then instead of writing dozens of fragments, I'd've (yes, that's a real contraction!) written a book or three and some complete short stories. Instead, all I've got are ... fragments.
Except that's not quite true. In fact, I've written at least seven complete short stories -- ten or eleven if I want to throw in a few that are more-or-less standalone, but really intended as part of a larger work.
But seven -- indisputably, at the very least, seven -- that are entirely self-contained; that begin and end and are, in every proper sense, complete.
Seven.
All right, that's not all that many given (a) how long I've been writing and (b) how many things I've started. But seven is still a much larger number than zero. I've been talking about this a bit with Level Head, who has been telling me -- though in the kindest, gentlest possible way -- "Will you please SHUT UP about not being able to finish things, because that's NOT TRUE?" And, it's finally sinking into to my thick skull that, hmm, maybe he has a point.
And moreover: what does "how many things I've started" have to do with it at all? Why do I think of unfinished stories as somehow a negative on the ledger sheet, overbalancing the finished ones?
Let's take another example: art.
Now, as many stories I've started and abandoned, the number of drawings I've started has got to dwarf it by at least a few orders of magnitude. I have sketchbooks stuffed with doodles. I've got inked images with no backgrounds, paintings that I stopped half-way through, digital drawings I quit on -- why, just the other night I started painting a sleeve for practice on clothing, and I'll probably never get around to painting the rest of the figure. I've got oodles of incomplete art. Most of it that even I don't like.
Yet I can't remember ever looking at all the drawings and paintings and sketches and inkings I've done, and thinking "I never finish anything when it comes to drawing." Sometimes I look with pleasure on the ones that got to whatever stage they got to, and sometimes I just look at the handful of paintings I did finish. And think "Hey, that's not bad."
Or I cringe. But I sure don't sit there thinking, "Completing three oil paintings doesn't count, because it's outweighed by the thirty thousand sketches that I never made oil paintings of."
Goodness! That would be insane. All those drawings are practice. I couldn't learn how to finish a piece of art without practicing first. And it's not as though any finished work I did would've been much good without practice.
So why don't I see all those unfinished tales as practice, too?
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-25 11:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-25 01:38 pm (UTC)Sketches, on the other hand, I can say "Well, I didn't want a background in this piece". Or "That was just a rough and I decided to take a different approach".
But even that's not all of it. My explanation for "why didn't I do more with this drawing?" is almost always "Well, I just didn't like how it was turning out." I hardly ever say that about an unfinished story. With those, it's more like "I got bored with it" or "I didn't know where to go next."
no subject
Date: 2003-09-25 12:26 pm (UTC)I'm fairly sure I have more unfinished projects, more ideas that I took a step toward doing, then gave up on the way ... than finished, accomplished projects.
But anyway, that's really beside the point I'd like to make: I enjoy your unfinished stories. Sure, I'd love to see them finished. But every time I see another little nugget from you - that's one of the highlights of my time on the computer. When I check email, getting a Prophecy segment from you is definitely in the Top Ten of Things I'd Like to Get in Today's Email - even if I don't get to it immediately. When I check LJ, right on top of my list would be "Hope to Find a New Post from Gwendelkitty", "Hope to Find a New Story Segment from Rowyn" and "Hope to Find Some Comments On Whatever I Last Wrote/Drew".
Now, maybe I'm biased because, after all, I know you a lot more than I do a lot of other folks, so there's a personal spin when I see something written by you: this is something written by somebody I know, and with whom I can discuss my opinions. That does play into it. But it's also because I think your stories are good. I think they're enjoyable. And I've got a good hunch that my opinion wouldn't be a fluke, if only your work could reach a wider audience.
Maybe you're not "there" quite yet - maybe Prophecy isn't done, Silver Scales is sort of in limbo, and so forth ... but, goodness, the getting there is very cool. =)
no subject
Date: 2003-09-26 07:34 am (UTC)Maybe you're not "there" quite yet - maybe Prophecy isn't done, Silver Scales is sort of in limbo, and so forth ... but, goodness, the getting there is very cool. =)
Thank you, Greywolf. It's good to enjoy the journey; sometimes that's all we get. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-09-25 01:26 pm (UTC)Unfinished stories leave you hanging because you don't know where they finish or how they get there. They're great gaping holes in the fabric of creative space-time that beg to be filled. To paraphrase, human nature abhors a vacuum.
Or at least, that's my take on it.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-26 07:37 am (UTC)Really, though, I don't want to justify feeling bad about my unfinished stories. I'd rather look back on them as "practice" or "proof that I've been trying". I'd rather think feeling any other way was irrational on my part, so that maybe I'll, y'know, stop. :D
(blink blink)
Date: 2003-09-26 03:43 pm (UTC)You know, I don't think that's a very likely hope: that knowing something is irrational will make you not do it. I know that you aspire to being a vulcan, sweet, as do I :) But you are better off, I think, trying to find ways to convince your inconvenient emotional subconscious et al that it should LIKE your writing and not hate it.
Easier said than done.
But I was vastly heartened and felt a warm smile shape my lips when I read this entry because you may have part of this task done already. I'm not positive, but you sounded less annoyed at yourself (on a visceral level, vis a vis your writing) than you _usually_ do when discussing it. You're semi-soothed already. Now to just figure out _how_ this happened and follow up stroking your bratty demon-kid psyche with a hug (or noogie, if it's that kind of kid)
I never did like this inner child stuff much, but I'm starting to see that if you think of the difficult, intractable, unruly side of children and ignore all the fluffy "pine forest that smells of wonder" guff that it is a good metaphor for how people _are_. Many of our strongest reactions seem to be rooted in an irrational set of preferences and compulsions that we barely recognize as irrational, much less have any straightforward way to mitigate or resolve.
(smiles) persist, sweet.
Re: (blink blink)
Date: 2003-09-27 08:37 am (UTC)This was something of an epiphany for me: if I can look at one set of unfinished works as "just practice", then surely there's nothing wrong with treating another set as "just practice", too.
It's not so much that "logic has convinced me" as "at last, I can see some convincing logic, as opposed to mere excuses or rationalization." Gotta be a step in the right direction.
Thanks for the encouragement, breda. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-09-25 03:28 pm (UTC)I think that in my so-called "writing career," I have finished a total of four stories. Perhaps I'd find one or two more if I really dug around in my archives, but I doubt it. One was printed in my high school's lit mag, one I wrote for a creative writing course in college, one I found on the diskettes that I'd saved from my old word processor, and the last one was the short bit about Greek Muses that I posted to my writing journal.
That's it! But story fragments?
To give you the abbreviated version of the list, there's some on vampires, some on a fantasy world that I had a hand in "making," some X-Men fanfic, some X-Men/Authority crossover fanfic, and some Harry Potter fanfic. I could go on, but you get the idea. I have tons of those floating around. ;-)
Yet the comparison of finished-to-unfinished work doesn't daunt me one little bit. Usually when I run across a fragment that I'd forgotten about writing, I'll read it over and decide whether or not I like the way I treated the scene, or the dialogue, (yup, some of my snippets consist solely of people talking!) or what have you. If I don't, then I might make changes and lengthen the scene a bit, but that's all. Then I can say to myself, "Well, parts X, Y, and Z of the original didn't work at all, but I've become much better at the task of writing, so I'm pleased that I was able to improve it."
So if I'm able to see a steady progression from "bad technique" to "better technique," I know that none of my efforts have been in vain. Even the unfinished efforts. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2003-09-26 07:29 am (UTC)I thought it was interesting that the first few comments on this thread attempted to answer my rhetorical question, and explain why I'd feel differently about writings than drawings. Truly, I don't want to justify my "Look at all this stuff I haven't finished! I'm a failure!" feeling. I just want it to go away. :)
I certainly think it's eminently sensible of you not to feel daunted by the old writings. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-09-26 06:56 am (UTC)I'm mildly surprised nobody has mentioned the "ten thousand bad drawings" theory of artistic development yet, i.e., every artist has 10,000 crappy drawings inside them which must be put down on paper before the good ones can come out.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-26 07:25 am (UTC)Agh! Do artists have that, too? A writer's list I'm on has been punting about this "1,000,000 words" figure, which annoys me on levels I'm not even going to get into. (Mostly because I've already been ranting too much about it in emails.)
Though, I suppose if the principle of these numbers is to make us stop feeling bad about the crappy/unfinished stuff, I ought to say, "More power to it". :)