Want to know why you finishing is the most important part of writing?

When I taught university literature and composition classes, I had many students who were excellent writers. Their first papers were A papers, and they clearly knew how to write.

They knew they were good writers, too, and many were hoping to coast through my class. Imagine their upset when my grade was based not on my grade on that one particular paper, but on the percentage of work they completed for the class.

My theory is this. If you follow the exercises, reading and thinking I lay out, your writing will improve. There is no doubt in my mind your writing will improve.

If you don’t, you won’t improve.

It doesn’t matter to me if you begin as a good writer, if you leave my class as the same good writer, then I haven’t done my job.

Conversely, I had many students who — had I followed the traditional grading process — would have received C- or lower on their first papers and slowly worked their way up to B work by the end of the class. At best.

The person who came to class, handing in solid paper after paper, but never improving, does not deserve the same recognition for their work as someone who learns and grows.

Seth Godin refers to this as Red Lantern thinking. Completing a thing after having worked hard to get to your goal holds far more significance than reaching a goal without having to try.

The students who received lower grades did not really finish writing. They hoped to slide through on what they already knew. But this is not a good model for writing or for life.

Why?

Because not everything will be easy. Eventually, you will hit a wall, and if you have not practiced that painful inching forward that goes along with working hard at something when you’re not good at it, then you will not pass that wall.

So when you’re writing and you feel yourself hit that wall. It will happen at some point. Expect it. Keep going. Inch forward, push on, no matter how unpleasant it may be. No matter how much you may hate what you’re producing.

You must finish writing.

Remember this, when writing feels the hardest and most unpleasant, it is usually because you are doing something you have not done before. You are pushing past your previous boundaries to create something new.

You must finish writing.

Stick with it, keep going, keep practicing the ways to push through blocks, and keep moving. Because even if what you ultimately produce isn’t something you love, you have finished. And that is worth everything because it will serve you well from that point on.

This put control of the grade directly in the hands of my students. Even so, many didn’t like it.

What happens when you don’t finish writing

Some tough love here. To myself and my endless files of started but not finished stories and poems:

If you don’t finish, what you write doesn’t matter. I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true. While your poem/book/article/pitch/[FILL IN THE BLANK] sits in draft, it’s still a flight of fancy. A dream. Great, you’re putting words on paper, but until what you write is finished, it doesn’t really exist.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s still a huge accomplishment to finish a draft, but when that draft languishes on your hard drive and in your notebooks doing nothing but poking at your conscience or being forgotten…. It might as well not exist.

Done is better than perfect. Especially since nothing is perfect. Done is better than the envisioned literary work of genius in your heart and mind. Done is better than perfect because half finished doesn’t exist.

This is why you must finish writing.