To date, I have completed stories, but I have a much larger backlog of incomplete stories. Maybe I’m content unshelving my stories from time-to-time to work on them as my schedule allows. But would completing another story make me feel better?
The answer is undoubtedly yes, especially if I complete my full-length novel project. Or at least that’s my perception. I imagine it will be a day long celebrated within my house. But then again, maybe completing the novel I originally visualized over a decade ago will leave me feeling empty inside.
Hear me out: This thing I spent so many years thinking about, the world I spent so much time living in, a flexible living breathing world that’s been allowed to grow and thrive within my head, will have to at some point be finalized in order to make my book a reality.
This story’s become an old friend, and in some sense I will be forced to say goodbye to parts of it.
So, for now, the story gets to live rent-free in my head, but along with that comes the anxiety of not sharing it with the world. As stands, Five Rings is a black mark on my record, an incomplete work that’s my sole responsibility to deliver. After all, the inspiration came to me. So, in a cosmic sense, it is my duty to deliver this particular product if I don’t want to see it swallowed up in the ether.
Zeigernik
One day, psychologist/professor Kurt Lewin noticed waiters were very good at recalling unpaid orders. But once the tabs were settled, they had much more trouble recalling the details. He created a field theory that suggested unfinished tasks create tension which allow temporary content to be easily accessible by the brain, tension that is only released once the task is complete.
Lewin had a student named Bluma Zeigarnik who was inspired by his work and continued his theory by performing a study at the college. Zeigarnik had half the student participants perform tasks to completion, while the other half were interrupted halfway through.
She found that the students who were interrupted could better recall the details of the tasks they were performing. (Later, more modern studies have even found that people who have major unfinished tasks lingering in their head tend to have less focus than those who do not. For example, if test subjects are asked to read a scholarly article and answer questions, the ones who don’t have a huge unfinished project lingering in their mind tend to stay more focused and perform better.)
Another of Lewin’s students, Maria Ovsiankina, took the study a step further. The Ovsiankina Effect states that the psychology of the individual is more important than the interruption of the task, so whether or not the subject resumes the interrupted task or not is driven by whether or not the subject perceives the task as having been accomplished, even if their definition of “accomplishment” is that they’ve already done “good enough”.
That’s kind of where I am right now. I’ve written and completed works, and I feel more often enough that I’ve done “good enough” in the writing arena and I’m satisfied with a life I can look upon proudly. I’ve completed enough of my bucket list that those last few items don’t bother me as much as they probably should.
But the Zeigarnik Effect is still going on. I’ve got all these story details swimming in my head taking up brain real estate, begging to be put down on paper so I can free up some organic memory blocks.
So it all comes down to how you view or define “completion”. What’s good enough for you? Maybe worldbuilding is all you need. Maybe writing down your ideas as they come is cathartic enough to keep you happy. Maybe you enjoy writing as a hobby and don’t mind just dabbling from the sidelines. Maybe you write until the story’s not fun anymore. Maybe you’re satisfied at completing a first draft before moving on, letting your completed works ultimately sit on your hard drive with no ambitions to publish. Or maybe you’re satisfied once you’ve edited and polished your work and have a loved one read what you’ve written. Or maybe, just maybe, you’re so driven that you won’t stop until your book is out there for publication.
I’ve met every one of these types of writers. And they are all writers.
But I’m unsure where I sit in the above list. I’m definitely satisfied with what I’ve achieved, but I know at this point in life I could push further. I wouldn’t mind pushing further. But I’ll have to do it without deadlines, without stakes, without rewards. Which requires me to conjure motivation out of thin air. I sometimes manage this, but I don’t manage it often enough.
The Breathtaking View That Lies Beyond
Turns out the way to counter the Zeigarnik Effect is to create a plan to complete the unfinished task. Once a plan has been made to achieve the goal, the “drive to attain a goal is suspended–allowing goal-related cognitive activity to cease–and is resumed at the specified later time”.
Creating a plan gives satisfaction, as does writing down story notes, as does sitting down to work on a scene one day. Perhaps these “baby steps” provide too much satisfaction, pausing the goal-related cognitive activity in my head. It lessens the pressure and kills the urgency. That’s…probably why I need a real deadline with real stakes. Otherwise, it’s just another form of procrastination.
Another way of looking at it is trying to see the view on the horizon. I do want to look upon my completed manuscript as see it as a breathtaking vista, feel that satisfaction of a job well done.
I’ve felt this satisfaction in smaller doses, and it’s one hell of a drug. Completing a well-executed story is far more satisfying than watching the end credits of any movie, completing any video game, or finishing any other constructive or nonconstructive task I can think of. The smoke clears. It all comes together. It’s like a beautiful, intricate mind map that puts a finished game of Go to shame. When it all comes together, when it feels like clockwork, that’s when you know you’ve done it right. You’ve delivered on your promise, and it feels good.
Nick Enlowe 