Not only did I fail at finishing NaNoWriMo, I'm also in the process of failing at finishing three - count 'em, three - short stories.
All three of these stories have been thunking around in my head like sneakers in the washing machine since the summer and suddenly they all have beginnings. Not brilliant beginnings, but beginnings all the same. The middles and ends have yet to be formed, though. I wonder if anyone else has this process? I have bits and pieces littering my brain and journal pages and papers all over the place and it takes forever for them to form into complete entities.
The piece I submitted to Windhover (which you can see here) was an idea I had in January, wrote bits of in February, and finally made myself complete (partly because it was for an assignment) in April. I guess deadline is what I need, but even self-imposed deadlines have been a pain in the ass.
A lot of what I write about in my personal/idea journal is how I have a hard time writing. This really doesn't make much sense, since I'm writing about not writing, but when it's all you put on the page it's not much of anything is it? I'm sure reams of paper have been lost to such laments. I just really, really want to not be one of those people. Maybe it's inevitable though.
I'm having a hard time focusing my brain today. I ought to plan out posts like I ought to plan out stories, and be interesting and informative. Guess that'll have to come with the stories.
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I do not know if this goes directly to your question of the trouble of finishing things (I know that obstacle much too well), but this at least seems tangential to the subject of beginnings without endings...
ReplyDeleteItalo Calvino has a book written in the second person called "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler," where you, reader, play main character in a failed attempt to read "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler." A bit of storytelling gymnastics, but this odd frame gives Calvino room to write the first chapters to I think eight or nine different books of his own invention, luring us readers in only to not finish them. All and all, I rate it highly...
Also of interest perhaps, Stanislaw Lem has a book called Fiasco which is a series of introductions to nonexistent books. He's also written a couple of books with book reviews of imaginary books. I just finished one -- "A Perfect Vacuum." Again on the lines of Calvino, it allows him to take the thousands of ideas floating in his head, distill them down to their essence, and not have to worry with stretching them to completion in the traditional sense.
Perhaps this is to say that there may be options for doing some creative aikido with fragments...
good luck,
Evan