On finishing things

Or not.

Long time no see, subscribers.

I’m not even going to look back to see how long it’s been since I last sent you something. It won’t make me feel good, that’s for sure. And that’s (sort of) what I’m here to talk about.

I just returned from staffing the Alpha Workshop for Young Writers. This workshop is for fantasy, science fiction, and horror writers ages 14-19. I’m a graduate, and on the administrative staff, and pretty regularly end up staffing the workshop itself. It’s one of the most rewarding things I do—these kids are incredible, and the experience is, in their own words, transformative. (If you’d like to help make Alpha possible for students without the means to pay tuition, please donate! We’re a 501c3 and your contribution will be tax deductible!)

A lot of our students had questions about how to finish things, where to find the motivation to write, how to stay focused and stay on task. And there are a lot of strategies for doing those things! But I often found myself offering an alternate option:

What if you just…don’t finish? Don’t search for motivation where there is none? Don’t say focused, don’t keep yourself on task? What if you simply wrote what you wanted to write, when you wanted to write it, and put no pressure on yourself to finish it?

This is not a point of view I came to naturally.

I used to be all about NaNoWriMo, crit group deadlines, contractual deadlines, wordcount trackers, whatever. But after I wrote Armistice and Amnesty on INSANE deadlines (three months to draft Armistice, and then copyediting it while drafting Amnesty, which I had to finish in about six months), I think something sort of…broke in me.

I didn’t notice it immediately. But while drafting Base Notes, even without a deadline initially, I found that I wasn’t letting myself backtrack, re-read, fiddle with things, etc. It got worse once I did have a real deadline. And then, once Base Notes was done and I had no deadlines, no contracts, no expectations, I still kept the habits leftover from deadline days. Daily word count tracker, arbitrary deadline, regular post-dinner 8-11pm sit down. And I didn’t reread, and I didn’t fiddle, and I didn’t backtrack. My book started to feel like a stranger, an alien. I started to lose the threads I wanted to keep hold of, but I kept pushing. And pushing. And pushing. Eventually, whenever I looked at the Scrivener doc on my desktop I felt like I wanted to puke.

I wrote a whole novella to avoid working on my latest novel, and even the novella became a form of masochism in the end. So I started a short story. And before it was done I was already pitching it to an editor, who said, sure, he was interested in reading it. At which point I became unable to work on it for more than 2 sentences at a time.

A large part of this was definitely undiagnosed depression! But I also think the relentless drive to finish things for arbitrary reasons, or commercial reasons, or professional reasons, probably didn’t make the depression any BETTER. I felt—and still feel—like my relationship to my craft is broken. Now that I’m in a better place mentally I’ve been trying to figure out how to heal that break. And what that healing looks like is only writing when I want to, and stopping when I don’t want to anymore.

These days, after dinner, I don’t automatically sit down to write. I do dishes. My partner makes elaborate tiki cocktails. We watch TV. Sometimes I read a book. I do craft projects. I go out and see friends. We go to baseball games. I stare at Instagram for hours. I scroll Tumblr. I play with the cat. I go to my community garden. I make a pineapple upside down cake. I do all of this and I don’t. feel. guilty.

Okay lies, I feel a little guilty. But I also feel good about my choices. And when I sit down to write now, I feel excited about it.

I went to Alpha with three unfinished projects: the abandoned short story I’d pitched to that poor editor, a self-indulgent fan fic in a tiny fandom, and my novel. I thought, well, I have an eight hour train ride there and back, maybe I’ll work a little. And I did. A little.

The students all had to finish a short story while they were at the workshop, so there was lots of quiet, furious writing time. Staff hung out with them in solidarity and worked on our own projects, swapping documents in the #Staff-Social Discord channel while we frantically problem-solved various crises in the #Staff-Logistics one.

Lo and behold, being surrounded by supportive, interested people working on their own creative projects made me a little bit excited about writing. So I wrote a little more. And then when I didn’t want to I didn’t. Unlike the kids, I had no deadline. But like the kids, I was excited to be around my people, discussing my craft with joy.

I finished the short story first, typing the last line during somebody’s lecture (sorry Rachel H., I think it was your lecture about the elements of story). Toward the end of the workshop, I posted my fic on Ao3 (thanks Jackson and Morgan for your help with the Latin endearments). And in the middle of the workshop, late at night, down in the lobby of our dorms with A.T. Greenblatt and a couple of the more diligent students, I typed the final sentence of the last scene of the novel.

I didn’t post on Insta. I didn’t get back on Twitter. I didn’t even think about writing this newsletter until a good week or so later. I just shut my laptop and started laughing. I told the staff and students. I got hugs. I texted my partner. I sat with my own joy and didn’t feel the need to use it for anything.

My one concession to the wider world of publishing and promotion and external pressure was to email my agent, who has been hearing me swear over and over I was almost done, for years, to tell her I had finally finished a draft.

She was very excited. She asked if I thought I could have a version ready for her by October.

Apologies to her, but I haven’t replied to the email yet. I’m not quite ready for another deadline.