From Zero to Sixty, Really Fast

Six months ago, I had yet to write a complete story from beginning to end.

I first dabbled in writing short stories as a preteen, and even then my weakness was glaringly apparent. I could start something, but by the time I got to the first “big happening,” I lost interest and moved on. My characters and plots fizzled faster than a Fourth of July sparkler stuck headfirst into a birthday cake (if this sounds specific, it’s because it is. But that’s neither here nor there). And in 2007, when I picked up the pen again and started getting back into the craft, I found that my weakness had followed me, lying dormant in my lazy brain for all these years. As of six months ago, I had a folder on my laptop containing 112 unfinished items, ranging from short stories to poems to the beginnings of epic novels I just knew I would write some day. You see where I’m going with this.

Nowhere. I am going nowhere.

Because, you see, to be a real writer you have to actually write things. You have to start, middle, and end them. You can’t stop after the first few pages, yawn, and decide to come back to it later, because that won’t happen. You’ll end up with a folder of over 100 ideas that never get off the ground. At least, that’s what happened to me.

The thing was, I knew that if I Just Finished Something, the magic floodgates would open and I would be a Real Writer. If I could only reach the end of a story, any story, I would find the ever elusive secret that would allow me to finally self publish or start querying agents. Of course, as I mentioned in my last post, being a writer is a lot more than just writing, but the writing itself is kind of a prerequisite to all the rest. Hard to promote the first few pages of a fantasy novel when that’s all that exists. “I just have to finish one book,” I would say to my husband. “Then I’ll know that I can do it.”

As it turned out, I was right. But I was also wrong. Because in order to get to the place where I could write an entire cohesive story, I had to figure out things like plot, structure, and the all important Questions. These Questions were what really drove the thing home for me. Each chapter, I discovered, must ask or answer a Question that the reader will care about, because the Questions are what actually make the thing readable. Once I finally learned that each chapter has to advance the story or characterization in some way, I finally stopped rambling and started writing. Since August of 2016, I’ve completed two novellas and part 1 of a short story trilogy, as well as 2 essays and 2 blog posts. That folder of 112 files is starting to look less like a minefield and more like a rich trove of ideas just waiting to be fleshed out and explored. How exciting is that?

That’s a question I can’t wait to answer.