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Forgive me writers for I have sinned.

I, after a lot of soul-searching, decided to shelve a work in progress, at least for the time being.

One of the most common rules in the deep and muddy mire that is writing advice is to finish what you start. While I am on board with this statement in theory, I’ve found myself unable, or more accurately, unwilling to follow it.

I was 40,000+ words into a novel that I’m very proud of. The concepts, characters and world I’ve built mean a lot to me. Within what I had written, I felt I had developed something that has to potential to be great. The problem was that I’d spent way too long trying to write the story in a way that lives up to what I know it could be. The foundation was solid and the tangled web of intrigue was well tangled but every time I tried to untangle those knots, my own reactions to those resolutions were lackluster. What would my readers think if I couldn’t even wow myself?

My motivation to write fell to near nothing. To top it all off, I had another story idea that kept begging to be written like a little annoying brain baby fussing for attention. The story planning  for this brain baby was such that I could start at any time but I was holding off until I finished my struggling novel. I was supposed to finish what I started. It’s the writer’s way.

Yet, another golden rule of writing is that you have to write… and I wasn’t.  I couldn’t motivate myself to lay down line after line of bullshit when I knew I would have to scrape it all back off when I finally found inspiration. I was frozen.

“Finish what thou start-eth”  was blocking “writer, thou shalt write” and I was left with a decision. Stick with the current project and continue to break both rules or sacrifice one to save the other. I chose sacrifice.

Here’s hoping it was the right decision. It feels right…so far.

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Sometimes you have to let your creation get the shit kicked out of it just to see what it’s made of.

You have to put on your tiny knit hat, heather gray sweatshirt, and scowly face and yell, “you’re a bum Rock, you’re a bum!” at your own work, even if the title has nothing to do with rocks.

You have to put your work into the ring with other people just to see how it performs. If it does well then you can scream “Adrian I did it!” but most people will probably just look at you funny. If it gets knocked to the mat, it’s back to the gym  keyboard to keep training to be a champion.

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Opinion and argument populate the interwebs like fish populate the sea. Unfortunately, unlike the oceans the stronger argument doesn’t always eat the weaker one. More often, the argument that splashes around the most wins.

You may be a good person with a good heart and are firmly positioned on the side of a debate that you feel is just, but if your argument isn’t sound enough or your mettle isn’t strong enough, a more prepared opponent may gnash and bite your face off. As frustrating as this can be, it’s your own fault. You lost because you weren’t ready to play their game.

In a straight up fact war, a shootout where bits of information and propaganda are the bullets, the quicker draw wins. That’s the game these über aggressive internet types play. Now you’ve got three choices if you find someone opposite you in a dusty, tumbleweed laden comment section on (fill in the blank) website. You can try your luck, draw your facts, and start shooting. You can choose not to engage, leaving the stranger in the tobacco stained shirt and dirty black hat to wreak havoc. Your final option is more simple than you think. Change the game.

Why bother playing a game outlined by someone else if you aren’t forced to do so? Why get in an opinion war when you could instead wield the most powerful argument tools in existence? Facts are blunt instruments. Opinions are sticky swamps. Pick up the scalpels that are question and logic and change that shootout into brain surgery. You’re opponent becomes your patient and they’re going to operate on themselves. (more…)