If Zeno's not in hell because of this, I will put him there.
One way struggling artists assuage a stunted career is to summon da Vinci Leonardo’s “art isn’t completed but abandoned” quote. Its dogged overuse has erased its profundity and replaced it with irritation as it’s thrown in with other quotes on facebook profiles to justify unwanted, and sometimes unacceptable, behavior.
But I’d like to take it a step back and refer critics of a writer’s perpetual works in progress to Zeno and his dichotomy paradox. In this application, novels aren’t abandoned because of some self-destructive unworkability with the plot or because the writer over-affects the tortured artist sensibility; it’s because novels cannot be finished, even published ones. Before all its intended words are written, half of the words must be written. And before that half, half of that, ad infinitum. Not to mention that when it needs to be edited it also needs to be edited halfway…
Therefore, no novels really exist; they’re just partial transcripts of narratives left on the side of the road that just happened to catch the eye of an agent in need of a paycheck. This situation is actually better for aspiring writers…you’re undoubtedly lazy, incompetent, and uninspired, but those aren’t the reasons you work in progress suffers from crippling incompletion. You’re just up against an insurmountable roadblock of ontology. And you don’t need to be an artist to experience the infuriating sadism of self-appointed tasks in artistry.
So, next time a family member ask how far along your novel is, the correct answer, categorically, is “nearly halfway”. Any other response is really giving Zeno the middle finger.