Express Yourself
How to Finally Finish Your Creative Projects
If you’re stuck at home, dig up a half-written draft and commit to completing it
Welcome to The Draft, an advice column about writing and life from Eileen Pollack, former director of the University of Michigan MFA Program. We’re here to answer your questions about storycraft, writing, and telling the truth.
Have a question? Share it with us.
Dear Draft,
Even when I have an outline, I start strong and then have trouble closing posts. Hours (sometimes days) of work have gone into each. I want to break free from this pattern and publish more regularly. I’m not having trouble writing, and I’m not having trouble making time to write; I’m drowning in a sea of semi-completed work. Why don’t I finish my creative projects?
Signed,
Drowning in Doubt
Dear Drowning,
Writers often abandon an essay because they don’t really know what they are supposed to accomplish. After a few paragraphs in which they describe a memorable experience or state an opinion, they stop, sensing they haven’t made their readers care. As I’ve discussed in earlier columns, what the writer needs to do is make sure she isn’t stating what she already…
