Someone’s been on my back about stopping part-way through a draft.
He’s right, but. Always finish a draft. Always. No exceptions.
Unless you can’t, in good conscience, finish.
If I didn’t know where I was headed, finishing a draft – riddled as it might be with with wrong turns, unresolved subplots and talking animals – would be essential to find out what the hell kind of story I was trying to write. Yes: an unfinished draft is an unfulfilled promise – a mere tease.
I know the story I want to tell. I know the characters. I know how it starts, and develops and – most importantly – how it ends. I can see it all, dammit. I just can’t write it.
No, that last one’s not true.
I can write it. I am writing it. But it’s hard.
Boo-frickin’-hoo, I hear you say, and I agree with you absolutely. Save it for therapy, or someone who gives a hoot.
Now keep writing.
Been on your back?
Surely you mean… caringly gave you moral support?
curses! i was gonna remove that first link to make it mysterious or summat, but you got here first.
Most of us give up on drafts… (he says in a sweeping generalisation)
I think the ‘always finish’ is a nice principle, and I know say it, but for me it fits into the ‘do as I would like to do, not do as I always do’ camp of advice…
griiin.
as for the do as i say, not as i do dictum, i can only quote Chaykin: GUUHHHH-UCCCHH!