Question # 3

I asked you a question in the last post, but I now have another. If you do have trouble finishing your stories, what do you do about it? I always think I have the perfect story idea, then I come up with something better. Also, what do you do when you read over what you've written and then find out that it's not that good?

 Hey, thanks for the question! Now that I consider myself a (somewhat) "mature" writer, if I have trouble finishing my stories I can usually plow through until the end. And that's not easy. Basically here, I have to tell you that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Never start a story that you can't plod on through until you get to the end. Always have the ending clear (or at least an idea of it) in your mind. It helps if you don't start any other stories while your trying to finish one, I know it can be hard but stick with it. And always have a character that you like. How are you going to get your readers interested in your character if even you don't like him that much?
  If you have problems going on with your story, have a talk with your character. Right now I am having this problem myself. I am trying to write a teen novel that run anywhere from 45-100 thousand words and I'm at twenty and fearing that I'm much to close to the end. I sit down to coffee with my character. (Okay, not literally!) "So, Molly--where do you think we should go with this? What do you want? And since I have a god-like presence as the author, should I let you have it?" ( I actually read a very funny T-shirt one time that said, "writer's block is when your imaginary friends stop talking to you" How true!) That helps me sometimes, although I really do have problems with the middle of the story, not always the end like it seems you may.

What do I do if I read over something that's not that good? Well, if it's savable it goes through major revisions. I will put the manuscript aside for about a week and tell myself not even to THINK about it. Then I will come back with a fresh mind to rewrite that section that I think isn't good.
     If it's really terrible, I will scrap it and start over again. Sometimes that is one of the hardest things for a writer to do, is realize when a section needs to be cut or rewritten, but as one famous writer put it; Writing IS rewriting.