The give-up instinct
I have a serious issue with commitment.
I don’t mean this with regard to human relationships.[1] I mean it with regard to fiction writing. I have a tendency to start new stories[2], get really excited about them, and then, two to six pages in, lose interest entirely and discard them.
I’m aware that this is not an uncommon problem for writers[3]. In fact, I think pretty much everyone does it. But I worry I do it too much. How much is too much? Well, that’s always the question with everything, right? In this case, I know I’ve spent a lot of time working on projects that never even get close to being finished and I’ve come to find this behavior frustrating. I have two folders on my computer dedicated to short stories. One is called “ideas.” It has 74 documents in it[4]. The other is called “stuff that’s done.” It has 13 documents in it[5].
So, I’m looking for advice. I’m looking for ways to trick myself[6] into finishing stories that I start. After all, I’m trying to write a thesis here. And, someday, God willing, fingers crossed, I’ll be trying to write a book[7]. And I don’t know for sure, but I’ve got a hunch that being able to commit to ideas is a necessity for successful completion of these projects.
[1] I’m actually a ridiculously loyal friend. I’m not bragging when I say this because it turns out loyalty isn’t always in every circumstance a good or healthy thing. If you are nice to me, I will follow you around like a puppy.
[2] Oh my gosh, I am so good at starting new stories. And this time, I AM bragging. I wish I could just write the beginnings of stories and someone else could come in a write the rest. Do you want me to start a story for you? I will, no problem.
[3] I feel like I write this exact sentence in every Bark post. This makes me think writers have a lot of problems. For the sake of looking on the bright side, here’s a brief list of problems most writers I know do not have: tennis elbow, property taxes, sunburns.
[4] Many of the stories I start never get far enough to have titles, but some do. Here are the titles of the unfinished pieces in my “ideas” folder: “A Bad Year” “A Very Old Man” “Applegate Ridge at Cottonwood Canyon” “Bears of Spring” “Beautiful Boys on Bikes” “Belgian Congo” “Better Luck Next Time” “Beware the Pumpkin King” “Casting Your Lot” “Denver Goes to Seattle” “Feeder Rat” “Field” “First Wolf” “Guns and Butter” “Fleas” “Herd” “Horror Show” “Jake the Snake” “Judd and Ginny go to Antarctica” “Kidnapped by Pirates from Outer Space” “Long Jump” “Mr. Pantages visits Puget Sound” “Mr. Still’s Squid Days” “Neville Sticks to his Convictions” “Next Summer We’ll Break Down that Old Swing Set and Put in a Jacuzzi” “Rock and Roll Graveyard” “Seabright Beach” “Spectacle” “The Den The Hollow The Jungle The Forest” “The Donut Business” “The Future” “The Goo” “The Thing at Sinai” “This Love is Pretend” “Trip Gets Sick” “We’ll Make Great Pets” “West of the Rest” “Why We Don’t Hang Out Anymore” “You are Such a Raging Bitch and You Know it.”
[5] Of those 13, I like four.
[6] The “trick” I’m currently trying out is called “write like someone else.” For Form & Theory classes here at EWU, our final assignments always involve writing some sort of imitation of one of the authors we’ve read during the quarter. I like these assignments because there’s a sort of freedom in doing not your own thing, but someone else’s thing. So right now, I am working on an imitation of Diane Lefer. If you haven’t read Lefer before, she has a rather nifty story in Willow Springs 69 called “Sin-Tra-La!” What I like best about her stuff, and what I’m trying to totally shamelessly copycat, is the way her narratives are structured. Most of her pieces employ short, almost choppy, sections that don’t so much flow into one another as stack on top of one another to create a whole story. It’s pretty different from the way my own stories usually work, but I think it’s so rad, I want to be able to do this too. So I’m trying it out. But I’m five pages in and I can feel myself having doubts. I worry the piece is destine to linger in the purgatory of the “ideas” folder for eternity.
[7] I don’t admit this desire out loud (or…on the Internet) very often. I’m kind of superstitious and I believe that if you tell everyone about the things you want the most, those things won’t ever actually happen. So I guard this. But I really do want to write a book. I want to write multiple books – novels & short story collections. I wasn’t totally sure about this before I started grad school, but being in an MFA program has reaffirmed for me how much I dig writing, how much I want to be good at it, build a career around it. Additionally, I’d like to be a kinder person, a more articulate speaker, a more informed citizen. I’d like to have better penmanship and better posture. I’d like to have a basset hound. I’m definitely going to delete this last footnote.
Great post, Leyna. I love everything about #7. It seems disingenuous for people to pretend that’s not what they want. It’s cool that being in the program has shaped that as a real goal and legitimate possibility for you.
Oh, and I completely ignored your request for advice. I’m about the worst possible person to offer you writing advice, but I’m going to anyway. Last year when I wrote my final F&T imitation piece, which I ended up really liking, setting a page count helped tremendously. Knowing that it was going to be 10 pages helped me decide how to structure it, and once I knew that, I was off. I know that’s a bit different because it was an assignment with a built-in page range, but it was also helpful (in a weird way) when Sam would say things like, “Probably about X more pages until the end of this chapter, don’t you think?” Maybe setting yourself a page goal for a story, just to give yourself some initial structure, would help. And then later you can ignore it, once you figure out what you wanna do with the thing.
I like the idea of setting a page limit. Particularly because my stories have a tendency to get very very long, which is in and of itself and hindrance to finishing some.
My contribution will be to nag you into finishing the following stories for my own amusement:
The Donut Business
Jake the Snake (provided it involves Jake the Snake Roberts)
Beware the Pumpkin King
I will also help you gain some first-person perspective on some of your ideas by riding a bike (“Beautiful Boys on Bikes”), infecting my dog with parasites (“Fleas”), befriending Judd and Ginny Pantages and forcing them to go various places against their will (“Judd and Ginny go to Antarctica,” “Mr. Pantages visits Puget Sound”), convincing Slash to perform in a graveyard (“Rock and Roll Cemetary”), purchasing a weathered swing set and placing it in my back yard and then putting a hot tub in it’s stead in June, (“Next Summer We’ll Break Down that Old Swing Set and Put in a Jacuzzi”) and taking you to the Marquee (“You are Such a Raging Bitch and You Know it”).
oh my god, this just made me laugh so hard.
You are officially the perfect guy. This cracks me up.
I chuckled loudly in the riverpoint computer lab. Thanks Scott.
I don’t think it’s a problem at all that you have all these beginnings and all these great titles and all these ideas. I think it’s great. You’ve been in Spokane now for what? 16 or 17 months? How many stories have you finished in that amount of time? I’ve got a feeling that number is going to be high. You’re figuring out how you work. And one of the things you tend to do is start things — and then drop them. But you’re also finishing a lot. (Not as many as you start — but maybe you start a HUGE number and maybe only some are worth finishing at the moment. Or ever.) Maybe you sometimes push yourself to finish a story — maybe that’s going to be part of how you work. But having all those starts and figuring out which lead you to an end does not sound like a problem to me. It sounds good.
Okay, you’re totally right Sam. I went back and counted how many stories I’ve actually finished since starting school and it is, although not huge, a perfectly sufficient number. Way to rain on my pity parade, dude.
Leyna, what a thrill to think someone is copying me. Maybe I am the one who is copying you — I also have lots and lots of partial stories and story openings. But I find that stories sometimes happen when disparate parts collide. Then I need to find meaning to bridge the pieces or tie them together. Look at some of your partial pieces and see what happens if you — to use your own word — stack them. Usually when I only have a single idea for a story, it’s too pat and I run out of steam. Not enough happens. It doesn’t become Story until it’s disrupted by another thread. I hope this makes sense to you! Your Bark essay is so good, I know you are a writer.
Thanks, Diane! Much appreciated!
I run into something similar when I try to write – I’ll get to the point where I’ve fleshed out the general idea and then just completely lose interest. I console myself with the idea that it’ll all influence some later masterpiece, though I suspect that’ll be my epitaph.
I think the concept of having an inspiration for a creative endeavor and carrying it through to fruition purely for one’s own fulfillment might be a bit of a myth: your true goal isn’t to write a story, it’s to follow an idea. By the time you’ve abandoned those stories, you’ve already explored that world, so, internally, you’ve accomplished your goal: you’re fulfilled. Creating an actual story is orthogonal to your true purpose – at that point, it’s just work, and without a deadline, a paycheck, or a boss, it’s as motivating as cleaning your room…
Fair. I do like the idea that all writing is practice for future writing, so it’s never wasted time, but, yeah, without outside motivating factors (deadlines, etc.), it’s hard to actually get shit finished sometimes.
Ah, another brilliant post. I wonder sometimes if I’m more interested in generating poem ideas than in generating actual poems. One of my “tricks” is to use a combination of the buddy system and guilt. As in, I tell a buddy I’m writing a poem about a troll so when she asks me a week later to send her that troll poem, I feel guilty and try to finish the troll poem.
P.S. A week from now, I’m going to ask you about the Pumpkin King story.
Dude. You know I love to tell other people what to do but not follow my own advice. Not in that spirit:
Steal. I steal. I steal all the time. When I steal Chris Howell smiles. When Chris Howell smiles, I steal some more. When I feel like I am stealing, I feel like I am pursuing a challenge for myself and not trying in desperation to write a poem. When the poem is complete, it’s usually a failure of a theft (ask Spatz about my Kafka impersonation) but it is always a kick-ass poem. Plus, I’ve shown my brain another way to think, or another trick-in-the-hat, that I can use later when I get jammed.
Now that’s been said, I feel between Smathie’s footnotes poem and this post, I need to step my footnotes game way up.
Seriously, everyone loves a good footnote. They’re very trendy these days.
I’m good at ending stories. Let’s team up and make “Rock and Roll Graveyard” happen.
i love that you figured out how to do footnotes on bark. totally tried to do it before & failed.
i have read several of your stories. i have now read your titles for unfinished stories. i have liked them all. so i will steal absolutely everything you don’t nail down, and take all of your cast-off ideas. i am completely serious about this.
that form&theory trick worked pretty well for me, too, i think. especially my 2nd year. and i see no reason to stop now that i’m out of the program. i’m thinking about stealing from lydia davis next.
but that massive ideas folder isn’t a bad thing. i’ve got random text files sitting on my computer, and several notebooks floating around with ideas. sometimes it’s years before i go back & revisit that stuff & find something to use. sometimes it’s still useless. sometimes it helps when i’m in a drought and looking for a spark (and sometimes it’s frustrating as hell to have all those copious notes & be inspired by 0% of them). but this isn’t necessarily a problem that needs solving, i don’t think.
I’ve been meaning to comment on this for a while, but don’t know what to add.
But I want (in a selfish way) you to shift some of these false-starts into prose poems. Just think of them as an exercise? I know you have a well of awesome ideas, so if some are being neglected use them for poetry-gold! Do it!
“Mr. Still’s Squid Days” & “The Goo” would make amazing poems.
Can I be a character? Again? Please?
There are worst problems to have. I can’t let go of a damn thing. I have a complex about trying to finish everything I ever start…which means I don’t start that many. The only time that’s been different is when I forced myself this last summer to draft a new story every week, from start to finish, and then just drop it and not look at it again for a really long time.