Greeting and happy Chanukah to all my observant mensches. A recurring theme in this series of blogs has been procrastination and the things writers do that look like writing but, when examined more closely, turn out to be methods to avoid the actual work of stringing words together to form a story. What I think needs addressing is why procrastination is the enemy of all writers. Beyond the obvious superficial answer that procrastination prevents you from writing, and more specifically finishing, there is a deeper, more insidious problem procrastination cultivates: the problem of doubt.

I am a good cook. I enjoy cooking and most of the time the dishes I make turn out well and I get great feedback from those who eat them.  However, I am not a confident baker. I am learning, and taking baby steps, and so far, I have been successful, if a little less so than when I cook.

I decided to cook a traditional Chanukah meal yesterday. For dessert I wanted to make rugelach. For those who don’t know, rugelach is a sort of crescent roll pastry with various fillings such as chocolate, nuts, hazelnut, etc. I decided to make chocolate rugelach. I had never done it before, but I am good with recipes. Of course, see above, baking causes me angst.  I fretted through the entire process and was texting incessantly with a more experienced baker for virtual handholding throughout. At one point, I apologized to her for being so needy about guidance, and I said, “Once I do it, I will be able to do it,” and that is the message I want to use as an analogy for writing. 

The rugelach came out okay, by the way, though next time I would take them out of the over a few minutes sooner.

To apply this in our writing lives, I want to go back to the text I sent my baking coach. “Once I do it, I will be able to do it.” The first time I made a baklava, I was nervous, and meticulous with the phyllo (because everyone knows dough can sense fear) and I fretted every minute it was in the oven. Then it was done, and it was delicious, and people raved and now I have baked at least half a dozen baklavas. If you asked me to make one today, my blood pressure and heart rate would never rise above normal throughout the process. I just needed to do one to realize I could do it. Anything you have done before is most likely repeatable, and repetition breeds competence.

I now must state my usual disclaimer that there is virtually no consensus among writers and writing teachers on what is a definitively productive method of writing. Outline, don’t outline. Force yourself to sit and stare at a blank page every day at the same time or go days away from your desk woolgathering until the story no longer fits in your mind and must come out. Give yourself a daily/weekly/monthly quota or take it as it comes. No one can tell you what the right way is, specifically. When asked about what productive process looks like, I have settled on this answer—and I can’t disagree with anyone who calls it a cop out: Judge whatever you decide is your process on the amount of empirical evidence that proves it works. That is, your process is sound if you are completing work. If you are a woolgatherer who can open a folder on the computer that contains five short stories, three poems and a play that you have written in the last month, then continue to woolgather. If you have been woolgathering for four months and have five pages of notes, one scene written and still don’t know if your character has a wooden leg or not, it may be time to try another method.

I am going to reinforce that idea one more time. Some writers outline. Some writers don’t. Some writers use index cards, and some don’t. Some writers cannot begin until they know the end, others write to find out what happens. However, all writers write, just as all dancers dance. To be a dancer you must stretch, and learn choreography and strengthen your body, but stretching, and choreography and exercise is not dance unless the culmination of all those things results in actual dancing. That is, I can learn yoga and become limber and an expert in stretching. I can do calisthenics and weight training and become strong enough to lift someone over my head and hold them there. I can have every step of the Nutcracker memorized in my head. None of those things make me a dancer. They can prepare me to be a dancer, if that is my goal, but in and of themselves, they are not dancing. The same can be said of grammar, and Freytag’s pyramid, and theories about setting and theme and character. All these things are useful tools for both critical readers and practical writers. You need to decide which one you are.

At the risk of wielding a sledgehammer on this point, I want to emphasize the importance of completion. Everything that I write in these blogs is aimed toward the goal of finishing. I read a statistic many years ago that said only one of hundred people that said they wanted to write a novel ever attempted it, and that only one in a hundred of those completed one. Despite that, whether you are writing long or short work, you must finish something. Throughout this series, I have told you to be gentle with yourself when it comes to your process. However, there is one area where there is very little wiggle room. You need to finish things. You don’t have to outline; you can wing it. You don’t have to wing it, you can outline. You don’t have understand the theme of your story before you write it, and it is okay to make sure you know the theme before you write one word. You don’t have to use any technique that anyone else has ever used. But you must finish. That is the be-all end-all. If you don’t finish, all you have is potential, and potential is a double-edged sword. That unfinished work you have, that great outline you have worked on for a year has the potential to be the greatest story ever told. It also has the potential to whisper at you that you have been spinning your wheels in the mud for a year and maybe, just maybe there is a reason you haven’t started. Maybe you just aren’t a writer. That can be fatal. Don’t indulge that voice.  It is lying to you. The thing is, you have to prove that to yourself, and you are the only one who can.

I have written before about the thrill involved in the simple act of typing, “the end,” and that remains true, but the other facet of completion is that is the only barometer of your progress. There is no way to judge what is a good outline, or what is a well-written index card. Your third draft of an outline is going to impress exactly no one. It is useless to anyone but you, and unless you complete the work you have meticulously outlined it is not only useless to you, it is detrimental, because you have replaced writing with outlining. Beyond death and physical impairment (and even that can be overcome) there is no valid reason to not finish a piece of writing.

Now, completion has absolutely no bearing on quality. There are lots of terrible finished stories out there—many of them making money on Amazon as we speak—but they are finished. Until you have finished something, there is no way to judge its quality. You can only get a sense of pace from a finished product. Character development, theme, atmosphere, you name an aspect of judging literary quality and there is no way to truly judge any of them without looking at them within the entirety of the story you are telling. Finish. Nothing else is more important.

To clarify, what I am saying is this:

Thinking about writing isn’t writing

Outlining isn’t writing.

Character biography isn’t writing

Buying an ergonomic keyboard and a chair made from the bones of Ernest Hemingway isn’t writing.

Unless they are. All these things can be counted as writing if you fulfill two criterions: One, after engaging in any and all of those activities, you actually write something. Two, after actually writing you come to a place where you type, “the end.” Until you do it, that voice in your head that whispers “you can’t” in your head will be right.

Finish, my friends. Chag urim sameach!