Knowing When to Finish

Have you ever given up on a novel, play, or some other literary project and felt badly about it afterward? Maybe you believe you wasted your time, or perhaps the whole venture smacks of failure. If so, there is nothing to be ashamed of. It's the experience of a healthy writer to try out new ideas, some of which just aren't destined to make it to the shelves.

I rarely start out with the assumption that the piece I'm working on will actually be finished. In fact, I'm not usually thinking about the end of a project as I start it. Writing is a process of exploration. Often, the end is a shadowy, mysterious place far off in the distance. There are times we will abandon the enterprise before we ever actually see it.

The process of writing each piece is as unique as the work itself. My last novel, Thank You For Your Cooperation, was the easiest to write. It just flowed onto paper without much intervention on my part. However, its predecessor, Gyges the Terrible, took four years to write and had two distinct incarnations. I wrote three whole chapters which got thrown away a year after I started. Once the actual manuscript was being produced, half way through I altered some key elements of the story and had to go back and rewrite much of what I had already written. Likewise, my first novel, The Grey Life, was completely rewritten several years after I had completed the original draft.

And here I listed only the completed novels, the ones you can find on Goodreads. What about all the other, countless starts which never saw a satisfying completion?

Hardly a waste of time. Often, the ideas, structure, and tricks we explore in unfinished works get transferred to those that actually make it into the light of day. The original seeds for a particular character might have been planted in such a way. The process allows us to refine our original thoughts, turning them into a more potent force in a completed story.

So how do we know when to finish? Well, I believe the simplest answer is that it's a feeling. At some point in the lifetime of a literary project, we just know. We carry its development far enough along and we are interested enough in what we're creating that the realization simply comes. There is no control over the timing of this revelation; it comes to us on its own. Or it doesn't.

How long should we play this game of literary chicken? If you have a tendency to be stubborn, you could be working against yourself. During the whole process of creation, it's important to constantly evaluate your progress. And part of that evaluation (especially in the first phases) is whether the whole enterprise is worth completing in the first place. My experience is that you know the answer to this question in your heart. Logic only works against you here.

So, on that note, I want to wish all you active writers out there good luck with your projects. And if it should turn out that you put yours away before getting to the last sentence, then please, do not fret! Take what's salvageable, leave the rest behind, and on to the next project!