IWSG - Feb 2013

Alex J Cavanaugh's brilliant dream of giving the writing world a guilt-free opportunity to vent about their fears and frustrations is back again. And this time, it's personal.

Actually, I've been busily writing my short story for Andrew Leon's Imagination Room contest (which has a deadline of today) and I'd hope to post along with this, but as it turns out, the short story isn't ready. So I'll have it ready before midnight's deadline I hope and post it then... please, wish me luck.

Because I've had something like a month to work on it and it's still not ready. It's a combination of procrastination, which is a real thing, not something I just made up, and this paralyzing need to keep changing things.

For example, I wrote a two person story. I had a flash last night that I need a third major character. I immediately thought of how to weave his person in, what their role would be, how it would help things... and I would do it if I had more time.

Of course, my other stories don't have such deadlines, so I do the same with them, I just keep on tinkering with them, never really finishing them. To this point, I've found two ways of dealing with the problem I have:

1) Arbitrarily calling them finished whether they need more work or not, or...

2) Embracing my problem, and just never finishing a story.

That's about it. I have found it easier to call it done with shorter stories, but once something hits 2500 words or so it starts getting really tough for me to leave it alone.

So, that's me. I appreciate your time.