Finishing

Yesterday I talked about my first word of the year: organizing. I’ll get back to that in future posts, but today I want to talk about finishing.

What do I mean by that? It sounds simple, but it isn’t necessarily so. Finishing equals completing, getting things done, bringing them to an end.

What do I want to finish? Well, getting my house organized, for one thing. Writing my novel, for another. I started it over fifteen years ago, continued consistently until I hit a block, then let it sit two or three years before picking it up again. Last year, I lost it all. Something weird happened with my flash drive and my back-up wasn’t backed up. Aaaaaargh! If you’ve ever lost anything important, you know how this felt.

Once I got over my upset and quieted my mind, I decided: I am not re-writing this. I am moving on. It’s okay; it’s not the end of the world. But then…I had the first 10 or so chapters in another file (work I’d been sharing with a critique partner), older versions of other chapters on a different USB stick, two writers in my writers’ group had saved copies of my submissions, and I had print copies up to a certain point. I managed to piece together a version that gave me something to start with anew and created a Dropbox file to avoid the risk of losing it again.

At the end of 2017 I had read Finishing School by Cary Tennis and Danelle Morton, which I’d heard about here. I thought its approach sounded solid, especially for an “obliger” like me. Accordingly, I found Finishing School partners (one in-person, one online) and it worked well until the loss noted above. I still believe the program works and plan to give it another go this year. I’ve already contacted both of my previous partners to reset our weekly meetings, and both are on board. Now to get going with the writing and revisions.

What else do I want to finish? I want to complete a couple of other stories I began years ago, and I want to start and end new pieces, work that has deadlines like those provided by anthology publishers and contest promoters.

The Bible talks about finishing well. It’s talking spiritually, and I do want to finish well in that way, but I also want to complete and do a good job on every task that lies before me, Writing, my work at the library, the volunteer work I do, leading my book club, personal studies, home management – I need to give them all my very best.

One thing that gets in the way, I’ve decided, is multi-tasking. I’ve always considered myself effective at doing several things at once, but the truth is, I’ve been deceiving myself. You can’t fully attend to anything when you’re trying to attend to many. And studies apparently show that people who multi-task are less productive. Check out this article. Yikes! Multi-tasking inhibits creativity! That’s not how I want to roll.

Final thought: at the end of the day it’s not how you start it’s how you finish.