WIP

Dear Reader,

Earlier this year I reached a milestone I was afraid I would never reach. I finished my first book. It is a rough draft in need of much revision, but I got it done. It is a great feeling to finish a project, especially for me. I tend to either start something and stop after a while because I get bored, or I get near the end and don't finish because I am afraid of finishing. I am afraid of having nothing to write. What if that is the only story I have inside of me? What if the next thing I try to write isn't as good? What if I like what I have written but nobody else does? These questions haunt me. I even wrote a poem about it:

END

What provokes the human mind
is our misunderstanding of ourselves;
it is irony that yields our thoughts
as we misinterpret our destiny.
We will always see two things,
our answers to our present future:
a problem and a solution.
We ask for a problem,
only to find a solution.
When our solution is concluded, we lose
our challenge.
Looking forward is no longer a goal,
for it is nothing;
but to look back brings us once again to
the problem.
There is no end to a beginning of an end,
which some find senseless.
The only thing worse than the problem,
is the end.

Although I wrote that in high school, it is something I still struggle with today. Fortunately, the act of finishing something has eased that burden somewhat.

I am now on my second book, and I feel about 150% better about it than my first, even though I am only two chapters in. My fear of endings is still ever present, but having finished something makes it that much easier to continue. I am wondering if there are any other writers out there who struggle to finish a piece of writing for the same or similar reasons. Please let me know if you do and how you handle it.

Speak freely. Write candidly. Read endlessly.