A New Beginning

I have a confession to make… I have serious commitment issues. I constantly rearrange furniture. Every few months I revamp my wardrobe (super easy when you only ever have 7 shirts max!). You’ll rarely get a clear answer out of me when it comes to plans a few weeks from now. I think you get my point.

But at the same time, when something REALLY matters. When it’s the only thing in my view finder, I commit. Hard. Like I might scare you away with my intensity about how fully onboard I am about it.

So you’ll have you excuse me for being a little confused at a pattern I’ve noticed in my writing. I get a brilliant story idea. I work on it every day for X amount of time. And when it comes to writing the end? I freeze. I forget how to put two words together to mean something. I lost literally all motivation.

It’s like I physically can’t write the end. But I’ve committed to seeing this thing through! So I SHOULD be able to get to the end (which is sometimes the entire reason I write a story!).

I don’t know why it happens. Maybe it’s fear. Or maybe it’s dread. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. Whatever it is, it’s annoying! My characters go AWOL. They pull pranks on me and wreak all kinds of havoc in my brain. It’s like overnight someone has kidnapped my sometimes cooperative characters who I’ve gotten to know really well over tens of thousands of words and given me greedy chaos gremlins to work with instead.

There’s random, out of character soliloquies, bouts of inaccurate rage, and sometimes even tears. My years, but who’s keeping track? And why am I crying? Because my characters has gotten their nails under my skin and won’t let go. They won’t let me write ‘the end’. I wish I could tell them those two words are about as far from being a final goodbye as meeting somebody new. I’ve still got hours and days and weeks of editing to do. And even when the project is 100% bonafide finished, I’ll still think of them. Finishing the story isn’t the end. In truth, it’s the beginning. But if I can’t write through the end, I’ll never get to see where my story will go. And I wish my characters respected that a little more.