This is also a perfect reminder of why you either should or shouldn’t let projects go on too long. On the one hand, if you let a project go too long, then you may end up pretty much rewriting the whole thing. On the other hand, it’ll probably be a better piece of work.
That being said, let me rant a moment about leaving projects go too long. The longer it takes you to finish something like a novel, the less likely it is to get finished. It’s just one of those facts. If you let a project linger, it loses the passion behind it, it loses momentum, and quite frankly you lose the thread of what you’re writing, resulting, at best, with a disjointed work.
One thing that might help with the finishing part is knowing that whatever you’re writing is not going to be perfect on the first draft. That’s what editing is for. Just get the thing done and perfect it afterwards. It’s much more gratifying to say that you’re working on polishing a novel or a short story or poem, than to say that you’re halfway through writing something.
And just so you know, I am totally guilty of not taking my own advice at the moment and have two uncompleted novels that I’m working on right now. The key is to work on them, steadily. That’s the only way that they’ll get done. On that note, I’d best get back to work.
Keep Writing and Edit On