The Incompletionist

I have a hard time finishing what I start.  It’s always been an issue with me – I’ve tried innumerable ways to take my ideas to an honest stage of completion, but the simple fact of the matter is I’ve never been able to do it.  If I set something down, I’m probably never picking it back up again – and if I do, it is to start over in a rewrite or remake of the same concept in a different form.  I have thus accumulated a vast repository of ideas, concepts, people and places in my head.  They’re characters for tales I never finished writing, locations for scenes I never got to in a tale’s timeline, even whole story inspirations I never expressed on paper because I never figured out a good place to begin.  I have more “Chapter One…” fragments than could ever be healthy, and enough rough drafts to make an English teacher cry.

I am not proud of this.  In fact, it annoys the crap out of me.  I enjoy writing – I greatly enjoy writing – but if it’s over a few pages long, or takes longer than a day to complete, I’m probably never getting it done.  As a result I don’t have much to show for it all.  It gets frustrating knowing that I’m doing so much within the general sphere of “writing,” but so little of it actually winds up being put in a format where it can be read.  I’m also a ridiculous perfectionist regarding what I do manage to put in a coherent shape, which hardly helps matters.

So, as a result, I’m putting this site together as the writer’s equivalent of a sketchbook.  That way I can take all my half-completed ideas, rough character sketches, and story setpieces and throw them out into the light of day.  Little if anything posted here will be complete, or ever will be completed, but I figure if I force myself to get past the “but it isn’t done yet!” factor and thrust what I have out there then at least I’ll be able to say I’ve done something with all the words I’ve spewed from this keyboard in the course of my life.  Plus perhaps it’ll drive me to actually return to some things, every now and again.