Finish What You Start

Happy New Year!

It seems that every year goes by faster than the last. I guess that’s the nature of things; the more years there are behind you, the less significant each new one is.

Anyway, I realize I haven’t posted since September, and if anyone where actually watching, they’d probably think I’d died or something. But I haven’t, so here I am. Just so you know, I’m not here just because it’s a new year, and I wanted to start it off right.

 I’m here because it’s a new semester, and I wanted to start it off right. (When school effectively divides my life up into 3½ month chucks, it’s easier to just let everything in my life be divided up that way.)

At the beginning of each semester, I always think “I’m going to get so much done this semester!” and I get some done. But like everyone else, I don’t usually get everything I want to done. Right now just happens to be the time of year when everyone talks about it.

So, I’m going to stop my talking about that right there to keep from boring you to death.

What I really wanted to mention is a book I got for Christmas called Revision by David Michael Kaplan. It’s an awesome book about—wait for it—revision! I’m only a few chapters in, but that’s because after every one, I have to stop and re-evaluate my current situation in my writing. What am I doing in regards to revision that I shouldn’t be? Am I stopping my current draft to go back and start over to fix the things I want to change? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Before school ended, I had decided that my manuscript of 50,000 words was too garbled and messed up (because I hadn’t gone back to fix anything) to keep writing to the end.

Even though I’m this close to it: ||.

Yeah. That close. After reading Chapter 3, “Revising While Writing the First Draft,” I realized that the reason I haven’t started again is because I’m afraid I’ll never get to the end. I keep starting over before I finish. I’m not starting a second draft because I never finished the first! So, I’m taking those 50,000 horrible mixed-up words and finishing it. I’m going to write that ending, even if it makes absolutely no sense with the rest of the draft because it needs to happen. When I’m done, then I can start over again and get things in the right order. Because you can’t revise if it was never there in the first place. I have to finish; I haven’t finished something (well, haven’t finished a longer work) since 2007. I’ve been working on bits and pieces projects since then, short stories, but no complete manuscripts. I’m going to finish, partly so that I can better rewrite, but also to prove to myself that I can still do it. You'll never get published if you don't write the ending.