Excerpted from UNSTUCK by Ramona Ausubel. Copyright © 2026 by Ramona Ausubel. Published with permission from Tin House, an imprint of Zando, LLC.
At conferences and in classrooms, writers talk a lot about finishing their novels, memoirs, short stories, or collections of poems. That glittery, bubbly moment of completion with all its imagined champagne toasts and jumps-of-joy is evoked, even early in the writing process. We start because we want to finish. This is natural, and of course seeing the thing to the end is deeply satisfying and to look forward to that arrival is key to taking the journey in the first place. I want us all to finish our projects too!