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deathpoolquinn:

rebeldawns:

do u guys ever look back at a piece of half-done writing and think ‘this could be brilliant. this could be my mona lisa. my starry night. my idris elba’ but you have absolutely no drive to finish it despite an unfaltering desire to see it finished

my idris elba

The reason that you don’t finish it – or at least that I struggle to finish things – is that it locks the work into its final form. As long as it’s unfinished it still has that limitless potential to be stunning. When you finish it, that’s it, only the things you put into it are actually in it, the potential dissipates, it has to stand on its own. And that’s scary, because usually you discover the thing is not as perfect as your dreams of it imagined it could be.

BUT very often for me that initial fear and disappointment fades pretty quickly. A few weeks after I finish a story that didn’t feel ‘right’ to me just after finishing, the fantasy of the story fades and only the story remains. And usually I find it’s actually pretty neat. So there’s that.