This post is more a rant than anything. Ever since I recently finished a novel, I've stumbled into the old habit of starting. Until I find that one story, that one plot, those few characters that I just fall in love with, that absolutely scream at me to finish their story, I start. Do any of you know what I mean?
Well, I'll tell you anyway. Since the beginning of time many writers have struggled with this horrible plague. We sit there at our computers, staring at the mocking white page (Or in centuries past, sat there staring down at a rock or a piece of goatskin). We think. We groan. We live and die, struggling to come up with some kind of inspiration. Then... Ah, an idea. We start writing. Time passes. We may or may not continue working on this new project we've begun.
... And that's when it happens. 99.9% of the time, this is what happens to all of us at one time or another. We either get bored with the new project, or think of a story that we get so much more excited about that we abandon the old story for the new one. We begin writing anew.
That, my friends, is what I call starting. It's a vicious cycle, a horrible pattern, and it's a burden that writers must bear. But I view it as an obstacle we need to overcome. In an old post, I talked about finishing a novel. This ties in with that. The same advice applies. So, yes, I may be blogging repetitively, but this is just something I myself struggle with so much that I felt it was worthy of a couple blog posts. We need to get over this mountain as writers, or we might miss out on a story that could've turned out to be great. Maybe it won't be, but if we don't keep going, we'll never find out, will we?
