Real Artists Ship: How to Finish What You Started

Do you have a folder full of half-finished stories? You’re not alone. This article explores why it’s vital to finish what you started, why many writers get trapped in an endless cycle of abandoned work, and how to break free into a virtuous circle of writing success.

But first, an anecdote that illustrates the problem:

Half-Finished Novel Syndrome

I knew a guy who’d developed a brilliant idea for a collection of novels set in a consistent sci-fi world. He had them mostly planned out and had started writing one of them.

A year later, he’d written half of one novel and scenes from some others. He had a novel-length world-building document and innumerable spreadsheets of characters and plot points. He even had maps. But he’d spent all his time perfecting his world and hadn’t finished even a short story set in the world he’d so meticulously built.

That guy was me, and that was what I did during the COVID lockdown.

So, yeah, it happens to all of us. But I’m a recovering non-completist who’s had two short stories published this year, and I was shortlisted for two competitions too. So what changed?

The difference is I changed my mentality to “real artists ship”.

Real Artists Do What?

Here’s the quote from Steve Jobs that inspired this article:

It’s a pithy aphorism encapsulating the concept that, whilst every artist has ideas, completing projects, or shipping them, as he put it, sets successful artists apart from people who are all talk and no action.

The point Jobs was making was that it doesn’t matter how great anything is if it just sits on your desk, or in your drafts folder, half-finished. The only work that counts is work that’s out there.

Real Artists Ship: What Does it Mean for a Writer?

For writers, “shipping” our work takes many forms:

• Gaining commercial publication
• Entering a literary competition
• Submitting to literary magazines
• Self-publishing
• Reading your story out at a literary event
• Posting on your own website
• Even just emailing it to your friends and family

The Siren Song of New Ideas

As writers, we’re often seduced by the allure of new ideas. The excitement of a fresh concept, the potential of a new story, can be intoxicating. This is what I call the siren song of new ideas, and it can become a vicious circle of not finishing what you started, as shown below:

After we have an idea for a story, there’s a burst of excitement, enthusiasm and rapid progress as we write the idea down. But inevitably at some point that eases and equally inevitably at some point we hit a bit of a roadblock. We’re not sure where the story is going, or how to write a satisfying ending, or it’s just not quite how we envisaged it before we started writing. If we’re not careful, our inner critic, rightly or wrongly, starts telling us the story isn’t working. We don’t deal with self-doubt.

Writing becomes a slog. Editing just reminds us how disappointing the story is. Progress slows to a crawl, or stops completely.

Now, we’re in trouble.

And the problem is, our brains release dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter, when we encounter novel experiences or ideas. This chemical reward means that compared to the slog of finishing an existing story, moving on to start a new project is far more appealing.

And so our brains come up with a million different ways to convince us that the new idea will be better than the tired, old, almost-complete one that turned out to be a nowhere near as good as we hoped. It’ll be different this time, right? This idea really is great!

And so the cycle starts again.

The Cost of Not Being Able to Finish What You Started

This cycle of starting but failing to complete projects comes at a cost. Leaving projects incomplete exacts a toll that many writers underestimate:

• Each unfinished project leaves us with a nagging sense of failure.
• Without a portfolio of completed works, we miss the opportunity for publication and recognition.
• By abandoning stories half finished, we miss out on learning how to finish them, which can make finishing the next one even harder.
• Eventually, it just becomes normal. We never finish anything, because that’s how we’ve taught ourselves to act.

The Psychology Behind Not Being Able to Finish What You Started

There are strong psychological reasons why we leave projects unfinished. Knowing them can help us avoid them.

Perfectionism

Perfectionism is the enemy of completion. I’ve touched on some of the myriad problems perfectionism causes for writers before in my article about The Amadeus Myth. Not finishing what you started is another to add to the list: consciously or unconsciously setting unrealistic standards for our work makes completion feel unattainable, and that makes it easier for us to abandon a project unfinished than it is to risk completing it. Nothing we do is ever good enough, and so nothing ever gets finished.

Think about this though, how many novels do you read that are worse than the one you’ve half finished? Those published authors aren’t better writers than you—they’re just writers who finished what they started.

The Zeigarnik Effect

The Zeigarnik Effect suggests that people remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.

This is probably because, at some level, our brains tick off a completed task from our mental checklist. All those unfinished projects, though, are still there in our brains nagging at us,

The Zeigarnik Effect is a mental burden that, ironically, makes it even harder to focus on the next project, because we’re busy feeling guilty about all those unfinished projects. The solution is obvious: complete projects to free up that wasted mental space.

Fear of Criticism

Completing stories and having them published means exposing them to criticism. There’s no doubt that this can be unpleasant, and one way to avoid exposing your work to criticism is to never finish it. Obviously, though, this is a dysfunctional response, and I’ve put down my thoughts on how to deal with criticism as a writer in more constructive ways before.

The Power of Finishing What You Started

The benefits of completing projects are huge. Here’s four:

Confidence Boost

Just finishing a piece of writing is a significant achievement that helps overcome self-doubt. At the least, you’ll be able to show it to your friends and family and bask in their approval. Perhaps you’ll sell it, or at least get it published somewhere. How much of a boost would that be?

Portfolio Building

A finished story is a testament to your creativity. Completed work forms a portfolio you can show to people. You can’t show anyone a mess of half-finished work and ideas and expect it to impress them.

Improved Skills

I’ve talked many times, for example in The Art of the Novel, about how not giving up is important as a writer, but improving your skills is also vital. Improving is the key difference between eventual success as a writer and ongoing failure, in my opinion. And it’s hard to learn and improve without finishing projects, because working through an entire project hones your craft across the full range of writerly skills.

Potential for Success

Only finished work has any chance of finding an audience. That doesn’t mean the work will definitely get published, let alone achieve commercial success, but sure as hell won’t if you never finish it. A finished piece buys a ticket in the lottery of publication and, like any lottery, who knows, you might even win.

Strategies to Finish What You Started

‘Shipping’ can become a virtuous circle. The more stories you finish, the more you know you can finish them, the more finishing becomes normal.

Where the virtuous circle diverges from the vicious circle is in the response to the story not being perfect. Instead of reacting by losing heart and confidence when the story isn’t quite perfect, if you have the ‘finish it anyway’ mentality, then the ‘shipping’ mindset will come, and you’ll gain all the benefits that brings.

Developing a “shipping” mindset requires deliberate effort though, and here are some ideas that might help:

The Pomodoro Technique

The pomodoro technique is a productivity strategy that involves dividing your time up into blocks where you concentrate on a single task.

One of the key parts of the technique that’s highly relevant here is that if you have an idea for a new project, instead of abandoning the current work and starting investigating the new idea, you write it down for later.

Keep an Idea Journal

It’s fine, in fact it’s great, if you’re having lots of ideas for stories. The problem is when you don’t finish the one you’ve already started. Instead of that, write the new idea down and come back to it after you’ve completed the current one.

Create Accountability

Join a writing group, do a course that involves handing work in, or find a mentor who will hold you to your commitments. It’s easier to finish your work when you know other people are expecting it.

Deadlines

Remember, a completed story is far more interesting to read than an unfinished masterpiece with no ending. Also, recognise most writers have a tendency to tinker endlessly with a story. To avoid this, set a deadline. Write and edit and tinker as much as you like, but meet the deadline.

At some point, you’ll have made the story as good as you can make it and you’ll just be spinning your wheels by editing it any further. That point is probably sooner than you think. As my editor said to me toward the end of the process of publishing A Kill in the Morning:

No more edits. It’s time to pull the trigger.

Get Completed Work Out There

Completing a story is a victory in itself. But remember:

Send your story out. Try to get it published. Self publish it. Enter it in a competition. Email it to your friends and family. That finished story in readers’ hands is your goal.

It doesn’t really matter how you get your work out there. The important thing is to get it out somewhere, so it exists beyond your computer and you can move on to something new. Whatever it is you do to ship your story, it says, “Yep. Here it is. This one is done.”

Finish What You Started: Things to Do

• Challenge yourself to be an artist who ships.
• Commit to finishing your current project, regardless of the doubts that may creep in.
• Then choose your most promising unfinished project and finish it.
• When you get a great idea for a story, write it down in your Idea Journal for later.
• Set a realistic deadline for your story
  • If it’s a longer work, break it up into multiple deadlines
• Find an accountability partner, writing group or mentor to hold you to finishing
• Commit to shipping the work when it’s done by sending it out somewhere.

Help!

If you need help with how to finish what you started or any other any aspect of your writing, please email me about your specific challenges and goals. Otherwise, please feel free to share this article using the buttons below.