Finishing a Piece

Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.

John Jakes

Today (or, actually yesterday but I finally got Internet access to write on my blog) is a partially momentous day. One, because I got a new laptop which is VERY nice. And two, because I finished a piece of writing. An actual piece.

Don't get too excited, it wasn't much. It was just a chapter of a book I've been working on. But, it's a great feeling. Most of the pieces I've already finished were essays for an english professor, poems for my grandmother's birthday, or journal entries for a half-filled notebook I end up throwing out anyway. And I think I've found my method for finishing.

We all have trouble finishing. That's why we're writers, why we're human. We procrastinate, we sit around, we forget. When I write a story, I write the whole thing in my head, and write two sentences on a word document. Why? Because there's something about that blank white page that seems to threaten us, or make us doubt ourselves. I don't really know why.

For most of my life I've had thousands of story ideas fall into my head like autumn leaves. Some escape me, some resurface, and some make it onto paper. . . before being sent to the trash bin. I keep a lot of them, but I start writing and then wish I was writing something else and then I move to that and then I get bored and move back and then I wish I had never started this because I'll never be a good writer and the Internet becomes much more interesting and before I know it the day is over. Yes, it happens a lot.

So, I had an idea. A novel idea, a series. A fictional story about a young teenage maid in the 1700s who becomes the captain of her father's pirate ship. I went right to my computer and began to type, working a prologue, and then a first chapter.

The entire time I was writing this, all I wanted to do was write a certain chapter I had planned, one that I really could imagine fully in my head. But I kept writing, all the way through without looking back. Because looking back is detrimental. If you keep doing it, your writing can never move forward.

Then I wrote the chapter I had planned. All the way through, no stopping, not even changing a word. I wrote during my vacation, and in the car on the way home. And then, it was done. It was all done.

I couldn't believe it. I had a chapter. An actual chapter I was proud of. Can you believe it?! Some of you reading this are probably saying, "Oh, big deal!" It's a big deal for me!

So my thoughts on finishing something are to go all the way through, like living life. Don't look back until the end. Just keep going until you're done. Live in the word you're writing or typing at the time, not the one you typed five minutes ago, or an hour ago, or four days ago. It leaves a good feeling inside you, whether what you just wrote was a piece of crap or if it was the next pulitzer prize-winning novel.

In the end, it's not the masterpiece you're holding that matters. It's the sense of completeness in your head and your heart that defines you as a writer.