Writing: You Can Never Conclude

Writers often start what they don’t finish

Writing has not been a piece of cake for me. I’m pretty sure there are many people like me too.

What strikes me more, probably confounds me, is never reaching a conclusion.

A lot of writers, to their audience, seem to have great conclusions in their writing. Some even have “The End” on the last page of their manuscripts as a sign of conclusion. But, if you ask the writer “is that really your end”, they would 90% of the time tell you “NO!!!”

Let’s take this situation for instance. Say you are writing on human relationships. So, as a psychologist, you have volumes 1 and 2, 4000 pages each. Logically, it makes no sense to have a volume 3. Nigerian students will even tell you “What else do you have to say? Do you want to write about aliens now? 😂”

As the writer, you know that you are not done but you just cannot go on. There is just this insatiable desire to continue writing. There’s always something to say, one more exemption to have, one more principle to uphold especially when you write about people i.e. lifestyle writing.

In my community, we were taught this:

“Writing is thinking and rewriting is rethinking.”

We all know that the thinking process is not one that ever stops. Thinking and rethinking can take an eternity, it never ends. Even after reaching a conclusion that makes the most sense, I would usually think of the other side of my conclusion and start the thinking process all over again.

What I figured is that most writers tend to overthink. To cover the scope of whatever subject matter you pick, you would often find yourself thinking of every possible outcome of that subject matter. This is exactly what does not make you finish.

You could even be a perfectionist, but to publish a piece, you cannot afford to show your ‘perfectionist’ tendencies. You’d probably not reach a conclusion. Say you are about to print out your first book, I bet you would be thinking “Oh, I should have included that on page 40.”

I guess time, energy, stress and (in most cases) logic can be positive limiting factors for writers. These are the conclusions you see at the end of every piece. Conclusions are not necessarily the words but the factors surrounding the production of each piece.

As I write this little piece, I feel I could have done better. But, maybe not today. I wouldn’t be able to put this out if I keep on writing. I’d not finish here if I entertain the urges in my brain to understand all the possible outcomes of this article.

Stay safe, writers.
We see what you do.