I have trouble finishing

[Writer61]

Oh, your mind! You went straight there, didn't you?

Anyway, my problem is completing stories. When I get stuck with writing a scene my habit is to work on plot/research/writing of another story, and I find it hard to go back to the first. Consequently, I have many partially complete works.

Do you have a problem finishing? and, if so, how do you tackle it?

 

[StillStunned]

I mostly write what I want to write. If I'm not feeling very enthusiastic about a particular story, it sits in my WIP folder until I do. I have probably about sixty of those stories, ranging from a few lines to seven or eight thousand words. They might get finished, or not.

I've posted 47 stories here in a little over a year. Clearly I don't have a problem finishing, if the story has me in its grips. It's just a question of finding which particular story it is that will grip me at a particular time.

 

[Erozetta]

If you can't manage on your own, try to find a partner.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Do you have a problem finishing? and, if so, how do you tackle it?

Sometimes I do, yes. I often get stuck on certain scenes. As you say that if you get stuck on a story you move to another story. I do something similar but a bit different. I'm rarely working on more than maybe two stories at a time, so I may go back and forth between two, but more often I will skip the tough scenes and move to another scene in the same story that is speaking more strongly to me at the moment. It's just a way to resist the writer's block and keep the daily word count up. Not that I write to any word count, but if I have ten scenes and I get stuck on scene 3, I'm not going to stall and write nothing today if I can just jump ahead to scene 5 or 6 and stay productive.

Of course, eventually I have to come back and finish that scene 3. How do I tackle it? I roll up my sleeves and get to work, whether that means plowing through some notes that I have or if it means going for a walk and re-brainstorm the whole thing, or whatever.

Writing is a lot of fun but sometimes there are bits that aren't very fun. If you want to finish, you gotta get after those unfun bits too. The good part though is that once you finish it and you're happy with it, you don't remember the unfun bits as unfun. You remember them as a very satisfying conquest. The work has a big payoff. It's worth it.

On top of that, conquering the hard part will almost certainly improve you as a writer. There are many writers here who have a certain level of skill (some rather high) but they never push themselves to write something beyond what is easy for them. They write the same stories over and over and never get better. And I'm not judging them for that, since this is hobby writing and it's perfectly cool to do so. I'm just saying that improvement is an added bonus of putting in the extra effort to do the hard parts.

 

[StillStunned]

Also: it helps to spend time away from these forums. It's great fun here, but it can suck your time, your energy, your focus. Last year I took a week away and finished three stories.

 

[BellaBestia]

I try not to edit until it’s finished. I’ve found that when I go back to edit I find too much wrong and psych myself out of finishing the piece. I’m currently in that situation with a story where I had to stop writing for a bit (real life adulty things needed adulting) and rather than just Re-reading what I had written to get back into the mindset of the story when I picked it up again I started to fix and edit and second guess myself. Don’t do that. As in life, finished is better than perfect. Save the perfecting of your writing until it’s finished, whatever “finished” looks like to you.

 

[NotWise]

I think your problem is the norm. I'm not sure you can really prevent it, but you might be able to keep it from delaying all your output. From my experience:

Always know your ending and write to it -- not just what happens at the end, but how it happens and why. You can even write the ending before you get there.

Set practical goals for progress on your story and adhere to them, regardless of what else you're doing.

If I'm stuck at or near a transition, then I need to rethink and rewrite the transition. In other cases, I need to add new dimensions to the characters to get out of the repetitive, predictable, and boring.

When you do leave a story, don't abandon it completely. Keep thinking through the problem, and return to the story as soon as you can resolve the problem.

When you do leave a story, don't dive head first into a new story. You can make notes, write a synopsis, or do some sketches, then return to your original task. That second story will be ready and waiting when your done with the first.

 

[burgwad]

I think the moment a story of mine stops delivering on its initial promise - either because it delivered prematurely, or because it went off the rails - is when I suddenly lose the heart to work on it. Coming back to it feels like a chore. Even if I know how to fix what went wrong, that process of fixing it can feel impossible to start.

But there is one thing I can recommend to you, if you want to try. Stop starting other stories - or at least other works of erotica - and trust that the day will come, eventually, when all of a sudden you have what it takes (for me: free time, energy, mojo) to get back to that original piece.

One other note, possibly relevant: In my own experience, regardless of how inspired and energized I am about a work, the longer a story goes on the harder it gets to write. It just always gets trickier and trickier for me. Jumping ship and starting something new can start to feel reeeeally tempting. And meanwhile, I still occasionally have that same issue from the above paragraph, where I hit a snag that needs revision, and boy does it ever get tough to stay committed. I’m still mot immune to quitting. Just this summer I divorced a work that was almost 300k words long.

It felt like the right call for me. It might not have been, for you. Sometimes this hobby just gets to be too much, and I have to scale back. But maybe you have your own way of persevering.

 

[TheLobster]

I try not to edit until it’s finished. I’ve found that when I go back to edit I find too much wrong and psych myself out of finishing the piece. I’m currently in that situation with a story where I had to stop writing for a bit (real life adulty things needed adulting) and rather than just Re-reading what I had written to get back into the mindset of the story when I picked it up again I started to fix and edit and second guess myself. Don’t do that. As in life, finished is better than perfect. Save the perfecting of your writing until it’s finished, whatever “finished” looks like to you.

That's fascinating because for me it's the exact opposite. I often back into the flow of writing by reading earlier bits of the story and editing them as I go, mostly by fixing small issues with cadence and sentence length. It lets me go back in the groove while making the final editing pass easier.

 

[yowser]

I don't know if this is relevant to your query, but it's an idea to toss out here.

More than once, grappling with a longer piece (and getting stuck or writing myself into a corner) I have the idea: am I trying to do too much? Is there maybe a shorter story in here than my magnum opus? More than once that has been the case, I've been trying to make the story longer than it deserved.

A whole pile of stuff here on Lit would benefit from moderate to severe pruning, and it is worth it as an author sometimes to think about your own work, and that maybe cutting and tightening is the answer to a lot of agony.

Again, not saying this is your issue, but something to consider.

 

[HordHolm]

That's fascinating because for me it's the exact opposite. I often back into the flow of writing by reading earlier bits of the story and editing them as I go, mostly by fixing small issues with cadence and sentence length. It lets me go back in the groove while making the final editing pass easier.

That's exactly what I do, too. In fact, I often find it difficult to continue 'cold' with a story, and I have to go back and edit to get myself up to speed.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

I've thought about posting a thread like this, but regarding a specific unfinished story that will now never see the light of day. I had a great idea for a particular scene and tried to write a short story culminating in that scene, but by the time the story was two thirds' done, the idea for that scene had lost its luster for me, and that completely killed my interest in finishing the story. I was reluctant to delete my unfinished draft entirely; spending all that time and effort on it just to send it to the recycle bin felt like a waste, but when I finally managed to do it, I felt nothing in particular.

Meanwhile, I have several unfinished drafts and unstarted prompts languishing on my computer, and plenty of ideas circulating in my head that I haven't typed out yet, and may never do. Having so many different ideas and projects is actually paralyzing; if I can't decide which story to work on, I often end up not writing anything. I can't just write what I feel like writing in the moment, because then I'd be starting yet another writing project that I may not finish. It's a depressing dilemma to be in, sometimes.

 

[Yarglenurp]

I had this problem with my series. I just ran out of motivation at one point. What I did was envision where I wanted the story to end, and then work backwards to get to that point from the current story.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

That's fascinating because for me it's the exact opposite. I often back into the flow of writing by reading earlier bits of the story and editing them as I go, mostly by fixing small issues with cadence and sentence length. It lets me go back in the groove while making the final editing pass easier.

Same here. If I'm stuck on a scene and can't get anything done, my mentality is - then there must be something else that I can get done instead. Whether that is jumping ahead and writing a different scene, working on the plot skeleton or going back and editing what is already done. I edit TONS.

 

[Erozetta]

Seriously, I had this issue not too long ago. Had an opening I liked and characters I loved but couldn't find a direction for them. (I basically had "Boy meets girl on Boston subway platform" through "boy's family is stupid rich and girl is freaking out upon finding out because oh my god, the fucking audacity of these people inviting themselves into her apartment!") mentioned it here and someone reached out to me with interest in helping me finish it. It was initially brainstorming, and that quickly became him realizing he had ideas, lots of ideas! He picked up where I was stuck and the flow started up again. When he got stuck, I did the same. Ideas begat ideas.

Somehow, instead of tossing the idea into the trash heap, we ended up with a 64k love story which is currently quite liked by readers. (We both initially thought, "Eh, what? We can finish this up in like 25k!" Hah.)

Even if it's just the brainstorming part, it's worth having a friend to help when you get stuck like that.

 

[ronde]

I always have an ending in mind before I begin writing, but I do get stuck sometimes. My way of fixing that is to stop, do something else for a day or so, and then read everything I've already written about the scene/story. What I'm looking for is somewhere that I diverted from my original intent or somewhere that my characters took me that I wasn't expecting. After that, it's a matter of resolving those issues.

 

[THBGato]

I used to, but that was when I was either trying to write film scripts or novels and you had to hit certain word counts (a film has to be 80+ minutes long, novels at least 80,000 words). I think that's what I love about Literotica and why I've found relatively "easy" to write here is because anything over 750 words is fine. There's no need to fit with publisher/market decided expectations. The story is done when it's done.

I also often start with knowing the end of the story, so it just a question of getting there.

I also don't start a new story until I'm well into the editing process of another, if even then.

Good luck finishing!

 

[gunhilltrain]

That's exactly what I do, too. In fact, I often find it difficult to continue 'cold' with a story, and I have to go back and edit to get myself up to speed.

One way to do this is to go back to the start of what you wrote and go through it again. That way you may find out why you began it the first place. It's okay to skip a scene that is troublesome and leave a note there about what you wanted to have in that space.

Also, I find that I can't always write a lot in one sitting. Sometimes just "pecking" at it for a short while is all I can do. Some people can do it, but maybe you shouldn't work on too many submissions at once. Think about them and make a few notes, but try to concentrate on one thing at a time.

 

[Voboy]

Old business before new.

I've learned that in my own writing, a story once abandoned is essentially done. I VERY seldom return to unfinished works. So if it's a story I care about, or if I know the ending is going to be excellent? That motivates me to finish. Because I don't let myself start on the new one until the old one's done.

Sorry, OP. There's no substitute for discipline.

 

[MillieDynamite]

It would be best if you stopped taking those little blue pills then. Have you had a boner that lasted longer than 4 hours? If you can't bring an end to in that amount of time, I know a woman that would marry you!

Oh, your mind! You went straight there, didn't you?

Anyway, my problem is completing stories. When I get stuck with writing a scene my habit is to work on plot/research/writing of another story, and I find it hard to go back to the first. Consequently, I have many partially complete works.

Do you have a problem finishing? and, if so, how do you tackle it?

But it ain't me!

 

[Writer61]

It's okay to skip a scene that is troublesome and leave a note there about what you wanted to have in that space.

I do a lot of that. My working document is like a patchwork of bullet points, headings, text fragments, sentences, etc.

Increasingly I use colours to distinguish not for publication items or things that need work from finished text so that they are easier to spot.

 

[StillStunned]

Have you had a boner that lasted longer than 4 hours?

I have. It lasted from ages 15 to 23.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Sure. I do all the time.
What I do, is have the currently hot project, and one I've left in the WIP folder. I'll open the older story and before I set down to work on the hot project, I'll knock out a paragraph or two on the first. Not even a hundred words in most cases, just a few lines. But often it's enough to eventually get me over whatever was holding me up and I'll have two stories that are hot. That's a good time to write. A lot of my stories get posted with a week or two of one another because of this.

 

[SimonDoom]

Yes my mind went there.

But to your point: yes. I'm a multiple offender of the crime of not finishing stories. I have dozens of them. But hope springs eternal and I still think I can finish most of them eventually.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I have. It lasted from ages 15 to 23.

Only 23? I suppose you mean that it's now only twelve hours per day rather than twenty-four. Or did you meet that special lady at age 23?