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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(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. :)