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| Learning360online |
Strategic Delay in Play
Here's a stunning revelation: I've gradually reached peak efficiency in teaching myself how not to finish writing projects. A recent shelf cleaning expedition uncovered a dozen first draft novels, novellas, long short stories over 5k words. Leafing through my canon I read a lot of rough but quite serviceable material.
My pattern is to complete the first draft. Then let it simmer. Then start something new. But I never seem to return to the original draft. Plus I rarely outline, leading to me following each new shiny plot point or character so that the original tale no longer fits the new story that has metastasized into something unwieldy.
I've got hundreds and hundreds of pages, tens if thousands of words, and only a handful of completed works over the last five years. This writing malady started awhile ago, but it's really picked up steam since 2016.
The answer to more completions is not drastic: Do a simple outline. Then focus on the next word, sentence, paragraph, page, chapter. Staying locked on the process of story telling is more important than front braining a slew of new plans, approaches, and goals.
I return now to culling my backlog.
