“One: Work on one thing at a time until finished,” Henry Miller commanded himself. “Two: Start no more new books, add no more new material to ‘Black Spring.’ Six: Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers. Ten: Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.”
I was never very good at finishing. I used to get a good start on an idea for a novel or short story. I would get five or ten or twenty-thousand words into it. And then I would get another new idea for a more interesting project and take off doing that. I have five or six unfinished novels on my computer hard drive. I call them my skeletons, and I ask, occasionally, if they will ever be covered in flesh.
