Every story I've ever written rots in a graveyard, unfinished.

[Wolf O'Donnell]

That's sort of why I came here.

A momentary digression: my father recently sent me a few Stephen King books, "The Dead Zone", "Joyland" and "On Writing".

Joyland, in my opinion, was the best of them all and probably the best book I've ever read.

I won't give reasons, if you don't know don't guess. I'm insane anyway, the explanations probably wouldn't make sense.

"On Writing" was entertaining but it left unanswered one question that probably can't be answered.

How the hell do I finish something?

I have a really active imagination, but I keep wandering away from stories in favor of new ideas and never see what I write through to the end.

I'm not sure what to do. I'm hoping that, haunting this site, I'll find some way through the wall of my own disillusionment.

Finally, glad to be here.

 

[FlakeNoir]

Welcome to the site, Wolf. Just letting you know that your post has been edited to remove your story as we don't allow members to post their work on the MB, sorry.
We have a Self Promotion area where it is fine to link to work outside of the MB though.

 

[Lets Rock]

Hi welcome and good luck with the writing.

 

[Spideyman]

 

[GNTLGNT]

....how do you finish something? Self-discipline....simplistic answer, but one you will have to embrace...all the ideas are fine-jot them down, record them digitally until you can get to them etc., but you will HAVE to follow through with one until the end, before moving to the next...

 

[mustangclaire]

Welcome.

 

[blunthead]

...I'm insane anyway, the explanations probably wouldn't make sense...How the hell do I finish something?...

No offense...

And, welcome to the SKMB!

 

[SutterKane]

That's common in a lot of artistic people. They have over active imaginations, half way through one idea they think of something they like better and move on. The best thing to do is fight your way through it, even if you think the new idea is better, that's no reason to not finish the one your working on. Set the new idea to the side and tell yourself you'll come back to it. If it's really as good as you think it is, you'll be just as excited for it later, and remember you were just as excited about the current project when you began it. Anybody can start something but it takes discipline and dedication to finish it.

Welcome to the board, and good look with your writing.

 

[Bryan James]

I have something important to say about this subject...

 

[king family fan]

Welcome!

 

[doowopgirl]

Welcome. Good luck at settling to something

 

[blunthead]

I have something important to say about this subject...

No you don't.

 

[Christine62]

Dear Wolf (my brother's name is Wolfe)--Wolf O'Donnell ...sounds like a writer's name to me. I know exactly what you are talking about. I was always stuck with that same question. Why does this happen to me? What is wrong with me that I can't finish anything? What is in my psyche that is preventing me from writing. The answer is nothing. Freud has screwed us over.

There is no unconscious force pulling us away. It's habit and discipline. It's because we have never developed it...but it is not too late to start. It is just a matter of FOCUS and DECIDING. Start small. Pick a story and finish it. Your brain is a computer waiting to be programmed. Imagine your mind as a separate entity waiting for instruction and tell it what you want. Tell your mind out loud what you want. Sounds silly but it works. Say: I am sitting down now and going to work on this story for the next 15 minutes. Set a timer. And if you get jumpy just tell your mind it's "Sorry we are not playing now. Time to write." and just do it...be the overlord of your feelings. Sometimes getting angry helps me. I get so mad at my lazy distracted brain that I tell it I am going to sit there and finish that story---and boy when I do, I will feel awesome! I feel powerful.

15 minutes is all it takes. There is a full time lawyer here in Oklahoma who has researched and written 45 full length nonfiction books just by going to his office a couple hours early and writing in 15 minute blocks. The idea we need huge blocks of time is a myth. Mr. King only writes 3 hours every day--EVERY DAY is the operative phrase here.

I am anxious for you to try this and see how it works. And when it works, get up the next day and do it again. 21 days is a habit, 66 days and you kinda feel weird not doing it. Let us know how it goes.

c

 

[Mr Nobody]

I have three folders (old style - actual, physical folders). Each bulges with the volume of paper inside. Little scraps peek out here and there. On some, the ink has faded almost to nothing, a brown-grey ghost of what once was deepest blue or black.
These are my notes. Ideas, scraps of dialogue, story outlines, script outlines, character pen-sketches, actual sketches of half-imagined places and spaces.
At last count, these three folders contained 364 separate and distinct ideas for stories, radio, TV or stage dramas, feature-length movies (and of course, each could be any of these things, or all of these things, or none).
Some of these ideas may well be dead - vibrant and alive months or years ago when I scribbled them down, but long since expired somewhere in the desert of time. Others are still very much alive, since they've never left me ('The Nagging Kids'). Either way, even if they're all salvageable and I clunk along at a rate of 10 projects per year - call it 2-3 novels, a few scripts, and 4-5 short stories; months worth of work, enough for anyone who still needs time for other things - I've got enough material to take me to my 75th year. And I'm still coming up with more. I will die with ideas unrealized and work unfinished. My notes, however, will live on.
You have to accept that. Ignore the unquiet voice that says 'Me! Me! I'm a much better idea than that thing you're working on!'
That voice may well have the truth of it, but the real truth is that nothing you write will ever be as perfect on paper (or screen) as it originally seemed in your head. We can only ever strive for perfection, as it is unattainable by its very nature.
But see how I described ideas as nagging kids before? If you were busy and your kid came up to you, nagging away over some trivial thing or other, you'd say 'Shush now. I'm busy. Later.' And that's exactly what you have to do to these new (unrelated) ideas. Shut them up, finish the task at hand, then give them your undivided attention.

 

[Wolf O'Donnell]

Firstly, I would like to thank you all for the warm welcome. FlakeNoir, my apologies. Like most new folks I didn't read any of the rules, and also noticed that the thread was somehow posted quintuple before you came along (not sure how I managed that one). Thanks for cleaning up the mess. Thanks also for directing me to Self-Promotion, I'll check that out.

Love both of the above greeting cards, canines wreathed in flowers are cool and so is a line from On Writing I seem to have skipped.

Christine, I promise I'll try. To put my problem into perspective I will sometimes spend a couple of weeks on a single story, hit around 20k and then lose faith in it...if this sounds crazy, you're right.

 

[Christine62]

I have three folders (old style - actual, physical folders). Each bulges with the volume of paper inside. Little scraps peek out here and there. On some, the ink has faded almost to nothing, a brown-grey ghost of what once was deepest blue or black.
These are my notes. Ideas, scraps of dialogue, story outlines, script outlines, character pen-sketches, actual sketches of half-imagined places and spaces.
At last count, these three folders contained 364 separate and distinct ideas for stories, radio, TV or stage dramas, feature-length movies (and of course, each could be any of these things, or all of these things, or none).
Some of these ideas may well be dead - vibrant and alive months or years ago when I scribbled them down, but long since expired somewhere in the desert of time. Others are still very much alive, since they've never left me ('The Nagging Kids'). Either way, even if they're all salvageable and I clunk along at a rate of 10 projects per year - call it 2-3 novels, a few scripts, and 4-5 short stories; months worth of work, enough for anyone who still needs time for other things - I've got enough material to take me to my 75th year. And I'm still coming up with more. I will die with ideas unrealized and work unfinished. My notes, however, will live on.
You have to accept that. Ignore the unquiet voice that says 'Me! Me! I'm a much better idea than that thing you're working on!'
That voice may well have the truth of it, but the real truth is that nothing you write will ever be as perfect on paper (or screen) as it originally seemed in your head. We can only ever strive for perfection, as it is unattainable by its very nature.
But see how I described ideas as nagging kids before? If you were busy and your kid came up to you, nagging away over some trivial thing or other, you'd say 'Shush now. I'm busy. Later.' And that's exactly what you have to do to these new (unrelated) ideas. Shut them up, finish the task at hand, then give them your undivided attention.

I think I read somewhere that Mr. King jots them down and keeps on writing the story at hand and if the story keeps resurrecting itself in his mind....and won't let him rest he will write it.

 

[Christine62]

Firstly, I would like to thank you all for the warm welcome. FlakeNoir, my apologies. Like most new folks I didn't read any of the rules, and also noticed that the thread was somehow posted quintuple before you came along (not sure how I managed that one). Thanks for cleaning up the mess. Thanks also for directing me to Self-Promotion, I'll check that out.

Love both of the above greeting cards, canines wreathed in flowers are cool and so is a line from On Writing I seem to have skipped.

Christine, I promise I'll try. To put my problem into perspective I will sometimes spend a couple of weeks on a single story, hit around 20k and then lose faith in it...if this sounds crazy, you're right.

I don't know how anyone else works but I'm not a plotter. I do not deconstruct my characters, I don't name them until they show up in the story. Half the time I have some half-assed idea of what going to happen, mainly a feeling or a hook and then I write to find out what happens. If I knew every detail, I would quit too, bored silly. What happens for me is a journey. I go down one path with one intention and people and events just show up and hold me by the hand and tell me where to go.

 

[Wolf O'Donnell]

I don't plot either!

There's just an inevitable and crushing certainty that no matter how original a story idea, it will wind up emerging as something someone has seen a thousand times before, that events will culminate in a boring and disappointing illusion of originality. I won't write any story here, my main problem is that I envy original works that venture far enough off the beaten path and I just can't think of one myself.

Take a look at Carrie, Cujo, Desperation, Joyland, Dead Zone...on and on. What makes King the best is the fact that he took old things and made something new.

I've written about a mad sultan served by a guilt-ridden vizier, a priest who ventures to hell to save his daughter, a team of cyborg mercenaries battling mutant moles in a post-apocalyptic mine, yet all those ideas are spins on something old and overdone that seemed new enough at the time but turned out to sound like the same old thing.

I think in the end that's what's critically wrong with me. I envy original, creative ideas and can't come up with one. The closest original thing I can think of is 'demon possessed dolphin drives people to murder with telepathy' and the premise of that is...heh.

In short, the only thing I want to plot is a 'What if' not so familiar.

 

[Dana Jean]

I think in the end that's what's critically wrong with me. I envy original, creative ideas and can't come up with one. The closest original thing I can think of is 'demon possessed dolphin drives people to murder with telepathy' and the premise of that is...heh.

In short, the only thing I want to plot is a 'What if' not so familiar.

I think that's Aquaman. (jk)

 

[Wolf O'Donnell]

There you see. Foiled again.

Bah.

Thanks for the laugh though.