I’ve been sharing snippets from my friend Becky Blades’ book, Start More Than You Can Finish: A Creative Permission Slip to Unleash Your Best Ideas (Chronicle Books, 2022). She emphasizes that a project involves constantly restarting ourselves, not because we’re lazy or bad or can’t finish what we start, but because we often have to stop and reconsider what we’re doing. When we write a novel, the idea we had at the beginning may change as we go along, and we realize ‘no, it’s not that; it’s this.” In my experience, that shift can happen almost too quickly to notice, or it can require a break. Sometimes a longgg break, while we learn craft and skills we didn’t have before. Then we reignite the spark and “restart.”
“You see, not finishing is not always a focus problem; often, it’s a reignition problem. ‘Finished’ is made, quite simply, from day after day of going back to the work. Masterpieces are made by stopping deliberately and starting again. Of reactivating passion and imagination. Imagine, rinse, repeat.”
— Becky Blades, Start More Than You Can Finish: A Creative Permission Slip to Unleash Your Best Ideas (Chronicle Books, 2022)
Oh, Leslie, thank you for this lovely piece. Prolific writers like you prove that starting often and restarting easily is the best way to a lifetime of finishing.
My pleasure, Becky. I’m glad it struck a chord with you.