Kenneth Branaugh, British actor (actually, he’s from Ireland), wrote a book to sell and make money to get his production studio out of his house. It’s called “Beginning.” I read it via interlibrary loan. It’s pretty good – I did no scanning.

I liked the chapter at the end of the book where he and his crew are creating his award winning movie, “Henry V.” In the book, Branaugh chronicles the troubles he had because the crew was doing the movie from scratch, not following anyone’s footsteps, except Sir Lawrence Olivia, who also put Shakespeare to film. The music composer had never written music for film before. Branaugh had never put Shakespeare to film before. Some of the actors were doing other projects at the same time and juggling schedules.

While “Beginning” was a fairly successful book, there has not been a “Middle” or a “Continuing,” and there hopefully won’t be an “Ending” for a long time. In fact, I think if Branaugh wrote a book called “Ending” the title alone would depress me too much to read it (but I would anyway, because I’m a huge fan).

My point is, there is a beginning, but, while Branaugh has done films/TV and stage plays, there has not been any other written work in book form. If Branaugh wrote “Middle” I would read it, and perhaps even buy it – so would millions of other fans.

Last year I lived my 50th year on this earth and began to realize, I’m most likely halfway through it, or less, and projects sit unfinished in draws, files, shelves, computer hard drives and, of course, my brain. It’s time for me to start to finish these projects, or I will run out of time and no one will know what I was trying to accomplish.

I could list all my on-going and possibly-going projects here, but that would be too depressing. I will tell you that over the last month, I have been told by fellow writers, by my children, by myself, and by the universe that it is time to finish.

Ok. That’s fine. Finish what you start. I do that all the time. I start the dishes and keep working until they are done. I keep doing laundry on Saturdays until the pile in the back room is down to not-quite-a-load. I go to work each day and finish the jobs my boss gives me as best I can. At the end of the week, I can list lots of things that I have finished.

But when it comes to my big projects, the ones that I thought up myself, the ones that are near and dear to my heart, I find lots of other stuff to do instead. (Like writing this column) Is it fear of failure? fear of success? It’s procrastination, to be sure. I’ve read about the problem in lots of magazines and writer’s blogs. That doesn’t make it any easier.

Why is it so hard to finish?

Instead of analyzing the possible answers to this question, I will say that realizing I have a problem is half the battle. It took me 50 years to make this mess; it will take time to clean it up.

So:
* I will work on one big project until it is finished.
* I will go through one file a week and urge myself to toss it. I will take a hard look at each file. Can I toss this because it will never go anywhere? Or should I put the thing online or on my website as a writing prompt? Or should it go in my new file called “Please Finish Me.”

But:
* I will start new projects, because that it what makes me happiest. But I will keep them in a notebook or file and mark it with “beginning.” This file collection will not outgrow more than one file cabinet of two draws.
* I will be realistic in the amount of time I spend getting my projects done (Don’t forget to do school work with daughter six and play the board game with daughter seven and read the novel written by daughter five and go out for the fish fry with husband one and only.)

Foremost:
I will write that second ghost book because I have a small fan base and they are asking me to finish it. I always wanted fans, and now that I have them, I need to be true to them. They are one of the reasons I got into writing in the first place.

Yesterday I finished a project within a project. I polished up five new ghost stories for my library talk this Wednesday. I formatted them in Publisher and printed them out for my editorial staff (daughter 4) to critique. Finishing feels great. Finishing is totally worth the kick in the pants I give myself every day. I highly recommend finishing.

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