I love to start stories, and I’d love to finish some even more. My job entails a lot of driving…A LOT. During the long stretches I get an opportunity to think a lot…A LOT. Much of the time I try to think of interesting stories.
“What would I like to write about?”
“What would make people want to read what I write?”
For some reason I try to come up with good openings. I work them over in my mind. It’s almost like I’m trying to find the perfect opening sentence–something along the lines of:
“I was born in the house my father built.” Nixon
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Dickens
“Call me Ishmael.” Melville
“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” Hemingway
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” Plath (love this one)
The problem then becomes finishing the work. I get 30-100 pages in then POOF- it disappears. The motivation wanes and something else takes over my attention (usually work or marriage related), and my writing stalls.
How do others do it? Everyone has different styles. Some start at the end or have the ending in mind. Others start writing and let the story guide them (Stephen King’s method I’ve read), and others plan everything out from beginning to end.
I’m thinking I need to start scheduling time like a work schedule. Set a goal for X number of words/pages a day and hold myself to it?
Papa's Point 