Today I will finally complete the rough draft of my latest short story. This story has been quite a challenge to get down into a first draft. Most short stories I write are complete within a few days or at most a week or two but this one I started in mid August and the now it is the first week of November before I get to the end.

There was a time many years ago when quite a few of my short stories crashed and burned if the processes stretched out too long. Getting stuck in the middle, feeling lost in the narrative, usually resulted in me abandoning the project and moving onto to something newer and fresher. This is nothing unique to myself; it is a common impulse among writers to feel the allure of a fresh project come along while you struggle with the current piece.

I deeply feel that one of the most important skills a writer can posses is achieving completion. Even if what you finish is deeply flawed and never shown to anyone it is important to get to that ending. Quitting can become a habit, one that robs you of the chance to learn, to grow, and sometime to achieve heights you didn’t know you could obtain.

This project I honestly thought I would abandon. I write complete stories while this one languished unfinished but I always returned. I knew my final line, I knew the point of the tale, and I just had to force myself to discover the mysterious middle.

There’s now the easier task of editing and then trying to get some feedback on the story. Perhaps it was too much for me and it’s not executed well enough to submit anywhere, but it is completed and that in itself is a victory.