Whispers

Who's to say if it's good or bad or indifferent? Writing something is a highly personalized experience for each person. Everyone has their own methods, their own reasons for writing, their own habits, their own goals. Someone may say they won't call themselves a writer until they finish something and that's all well and good; they can classify themselves however they want. I've seen a lot of one-upsmanship between writers-slash-authors, and you know what? the experience that matters is yours.

In a lot of cases, writing is like trying on clothes. How do you know a story fits if you don't try it out? Maybe the ones we discard along the way are the ones that weren't meant to be written, speaking philosophically, or maybe we'll grow into them some other time. It doesn't mean that having tried and decided not to use them in the moment is a bad thing.

People hold themselves to all sorts of standards. I don't really mind starting something and deciding it's not for me. I won't self-judge on oh, wow, I really slacked off at the tough part because face it, all parts of a story are tough parts to write. Sometimes, ideas just need to germinate. Sometimes we really do need to kick ourselves in the asses to get jump-started.

To me, the more valid question is what is it about this piece of work that's causing me to stop, and do I want to fix it enough to continue? It's not a fault or a flaw, it's a perfectly good question to ask. If I don't want to know what happens next, odds are no one reading will care either. And if I do, then I'll find a way.