Are any words better than none?

I haven’t worked on my short story for just over two months. It is sitting at 2,222 words exactly. The numbers-weirdo in me likes that figure, perhaps that’s why I left it there? Or perhaps I know I’m butchering the story and I don’t want to keep inflicting more damage?

I can’t even bring myself to open it and read it. I can watch the movie of the story in my brain at will, and it is great in the fully immersive experience of my imagination. But the written version is like a Lego diorama of the Salem witch trails; not serious enough, severely lacking in detail, and the characters are plastic and hollow.

Should I keep ploughing through, painfully extracting 500 words at a time out of my screaming, protesting brain so that there is something on the page? Or do I wait it out until I feel like I can do the story justice, which might take forever? Would 6,000 terrible words of finished story be better than no words of a promising tale waiting to be written?

Or course we all know the answer; it’s the 6,000 words of rubbish. Editing can turn a terrible piece of writing into something beautiful, because you can replace ALL the words if needed. So why am I not writing the story? Maybe the real problem is belief. I’ve lost the belief that anyone wants to read my words (besides you Doug, I know you’ll find this post at least a few days after I put it up).

Going back to my original question and the title of this post, the answer, for me, seems to be no. Actually, more like NO!!!!! Because I feel there is no point in writing words if no-one is going to read them. And that’s why I can’t finish my story. Good, bad or otherwise, I don’t feel like anyone is going to read it.

So I’ll change tack this month and my ‘do something different’ will be to focus on getting my belief back. Surely, I can find a reason to leave behind a bunch of stories that I’m proud of, even if no-one reads them (Doug, have a think about it and our next coffee will be my shout). And who knows, maybe, just maybe, someday someone will read them. And like them. Jeepers, that's a whole other post...