I have a confession to make. I am a writer who has never finished anything.
OK, that’s actually an overstatement. I have never finished a long-form work. As a child I wrote and illustrated complete stories, I’ve finished an [awful] short story or two in high school that no one will EVER see again if I can help it, and I’ve obviously finished many assigned articles. But the stort stories and even novels I’ve started on my own volition have never seen a conclusion. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve even gotten to inciting incidents, or the catalyst of anything—I spend a few pages on building characters and settings and the circumstances that have brought them together and then . . . .
There was this one mythical novel I started writing when I was about 12, about a bored young princess with magical powers, which was largely a rip-off of a book I had read around the same time. Then there was another My Girl-esque thing I started writing about a suburban 13-year old girl who had normal 13-year old girl concerns (“when I’m I gonna grow boobs?!”) whose male best friend and neighbor was a different race. Of course, I had planned to eventually have them fall in love. I never made it that far.
When I was 14 I got into fanfiction on the B2K message boards (I was young OK!). My legion of riveted followers never did find out what happened with Omari, Jarell, DeMario, and Druex’s relationships. (Damn the internet and its permanence!).
Today I have about four unfinished story arcs in a few notebooks. They could be great, but the suddenly-blank pages silently suggest that we’ll never know. Why can’t I finish anything, or at least get close?
I’m tired of wasting my youth and not tapping into my full potential, so I’m hoping to find out what my problem is this summer in a writing course—Intro to the Novel. Granted, it’s an eight-week online course, but I have faith in the instructor, who seems capable.
Hmm, tapping into my potential. How I long to release myself from this incessant thinking-and-not-doing hamster wheel. I am the one with the key, and I’m sure I’m making it harder than it is. This course—an undertaking that frightens me, quite frankly—is my attempt to take concrete steps away from thinking and toward doing. I promise me, and anyone invested in me that I will continue to make such steps. Bear with me as I reconcile who/what I am with who/what I could be.
