Question for you wonderful author-types

[amfanon]

So, many, many years ago (we're talking more than a decade), I was a semi-prolific writer of incredibly bad ENF stories. Really, they were bad. But I was young, and most of the problems were writing style, grammar, that kind of stuff. Redeemable, at least in my opinion, and I've gotten better (my opinion again). Anyway, they were posted on Bikerbloke's yahoo group (some of you may remember back that far), and were lost when the site got deleted. Long story short, I've had trouble getting myself to write anything since then.

Fast forward a decade or so. I've finally started writing again, but I can't FINISH. So far I've got 2 5,000+ word half-finished stories, 9 500-1000 beginnings, mostly in a sort of script/outline form, and and 42 paragraph-long summaries. That's 53 stories in various states of completion, with the first (according to the file's creation date) starting almost 3 years ago.

And I can't finish even one. Argh.

Help please!

Edit: That was more of a plea than a question...question would be along the lines of "how does one get past the last-mile version of writer's block?" Some of you guys pump out a masterpiece a week, so I'm hoping you have some ideas for a guy who can't put out a story per decade.

[Naivul]

You forgot to ask a question. :P

I'm in a similar boat. I used to post stories under a different name about ten years ago but since then haven't managed the drive to finish anything so I have tons of story fragments. Farther I got in recent years is a couple of rough first draft of Chapter 1 stories.

Why don't you post the synopsis of your stories closest to completion? I'd love to see what you have in mind and maybe talking about them will give you the missing drive you need.

[wayne]

I wrote an Ebook (50,000 words) about the "Kingman UFO". The book is historically accurate in terms of the people who were living in Kingman in 1953, the bars, the local place names, and events surrounding the UFO crash, and a double murder that happened on the same day. Thus "The UFO Murders", which is NOT available anywhere. I am terrible at marketing.

At one point I had the good guy and the bad guy sitting in a bar having a confrontation in a public place. I was about half done with the book and I just got stuck. I waited about 6 weeks for inspiration to strike and it never did. I worried about it, thought about it, tried to skipped the scene I couldn't finish, tried to change it ... nothing worked.

One day I just said "f**k it". Do something, even if it's wrong. So I stumbled thru it and by the time I was done with the book it worked out very well. I had a local rancher stop for a beer while towing a trailer that had a prize winning bull on board. The bull kicked the gate open on the trailer and walked into the bar. Chaos ensured.

It's not the end of the world, it's not the end of the story. Do something, even if it's wrong, worry about it later.

[amfanon]

Appreciate the advice, and I think Naivul is right, a bit more description might have been helpful.

It would be fair to say that all 53 are almost like chapters in the same story. They are all interconnected, sharing characters and taking place in a rough chronological order. One of the plot devices I used to create my fictional world was a "remote," modified from one of my stories from back in the day. I gave it the ability to project a "Damsel In Distress" (DID) ray (among many, MANY other things). I like to have things internally consistent and at least semi-rational, and the DID ray was my explanation for why what occurs in the stories is possible. The DID ray was patterned off observations from having read many, many ENF stories and noticed patterns, such as a) brats seem to love humiliating our protagonist/victims (P/Vs), b) P/Vs clothes seem rather fragile and accident prone, c) rather than helping the P/Vs, onlookers generally enjoy the spectacle, often making it worse through catcalls, taking pictures, etc.

Now, I mention this because ANOTHER of the DID ray's properties, taken from observation from many stories, is that it spreads from one P/V to other P/vs as they encounter each other. Of the 53 stories I mentioned previously, virtually all of them were descended from two specific seed characters which I had the DID ray used on. My series plot looks something like a tree diagram. While I thought this was a cool idea at the time, it may be that it's preventing me from focusing on just one as Wayne suggests or cutting parts as mentioned by CaptainQuixote.

Will have to consider that more.

Ironically, were I to just pick one and buckle down on it, it almost certainly wouldn't be the "first" story in my series. The first story is one of my least favorites at this point. However, as mentioned, it's now the basis for so many others I can't really get rid of it. Sigh.

Anyway, thanks again

[Zakalwe2]

Hmmm, the description does actually help quite a bit.

I think a question you need to ask yourself is, given the structure of your story universe, what does "finished" mean? For example, in your first (least favorite) story, have you laid the groundwork necessary for the later stories? Is the relevant information and characterization in place? If so, then it doesn't really need to "end", does it? Get your hero/heroine into an appropriate situation where there are a couple of choices and then stop. Let the reader decide how it came out.

A great little short story written on the ASN boards a while back has a girl in an embarrassing situation. The situation ends and afterwards, the antagonist comes in, tells her that it was obvious that she got turned on, and offered to help put herself in future similar situations. Then he leaves and the story ends with the line (paraphrased) "She got ready to take a shower. She had made her decision."*

Now, I really would have enjoyed a follow-up, but it was unnecessary for my enjoyment of *that* story.

* I think it was Somebody's Hawaiian Vacation, but not sure of the exact title.