All things must come to an end. The day we live through must give way to a new one tomorrow, the weeks and months give way to New Years and decades. Even writing projects must end, some of them earlier than others.
I have a lot of unfinished projects. Daily when I write, or think about writing, I open my program, or my notebook and scroll through and look at all the ideas I have started and never finished.
Why did I stop writing them?
There are several reasons:
I Found a New/Better Idea:
Don’t ask me where all of my ideas come from, but occasionally I start them before I really flesh them out. Then a new idea comes around and I jump onto that one.
I Don’t Know Where the Story is Going:
Sometimes I “off-road” from my outline and then get stuck because I have no idea where the story is going after that. Sometimes I don’t even have an outline. Sometimes, I just don’t like the idea as much as I thought I would.
The Writing Gets Too Hard:
There are certain topics and situations that are just hard for me to write. Certain emotions that I can’t fully express on the page, or certain situations that I have never been in and can’t accurately describe. So I stop to research and sometimes never return to it.
Interruptions:
Sometimes, I just get interrupted and lose my flow in a piece and just never return to it. It happens and it’s depressing, but sometimes the writing mojo doesn’t come back.
Thinking about all these reasons why I stop writing, I realized something. Those are all excuses why I stop writing.
The real reason I stop writing is FEAR.
Fear that my idea isn’t good enough.
Fear that I will never find the right direction.
Fear that I can’t do the hard writing, so I move to something easier.
Fear that I will never be in that right writing mood, or that I will never be as excited as I was to write that first page.
I am making the choice to stop letting the fear dictate what I start and finish.
