The April Blogging A-Z challenge 2013

I need to give myself a kick with my writing again, so during April I'll be attempting the Blogging A-Z challenge, and since my blog is about writing, the posts will be writing-related as well. I'm not sure what I'm going to include in each post yet, but the idea is to write a blog a day (except for Sundays), each one on a theme starting with a different letter of the alphabet.

The posts will all be linked here once they're written:

April 1: A is for Antagonist
April 2: B is for Beginnings
April 3: C is for Colours
April 4: D is for Death
April 5: E is for Endings
April 6: F is for Fantasy
April 8: G is for Genres
April 9: H is for Heroics
April 10: I is for If
April 11: J is for Jazz Night
April 12: K is for Kansas
April 13: L is for Lists
April 15: M is for Music
April 16: N is for Novels
April 17: O is for Open University
April 18: P is for Pantsing
April 19: Q is for Questions
April 20: R is for Romance
April 22: S is forSettings
April 23: T is for Tropes
April 24: U is for Unwritten
April 25: V is for Vampires
April 26: W is for Who, What, Where, When, Why (and How!)
April 27: X is for Xenophobic (or the writing equivelant!)
April 29: Y is for Young Adult
April 30: Z is for Zzzzzzz

I've started, so I'll finish...

Pre-Editing (aka Finishing)
We all know that March is NaNoEdMo, but there's an important step that must be done before reaching for your editing goals: finishing that novel. How hard is it for you to finish a novel? Does it leave you with a sense of closure or a yearning for more? Do you finish as many novels as you start?
 
So many questions in this month's WriYe topic!

How hard is it for you to finish a novel?

If I'm enjoying the story or I've got a time limit, like NaNo or April Fools, then I can usually finish a novel. The problem for me comes when for whatever reason I don't finish the story in the target time. When that happens I'll take a break from it for a couple of weeks and then find it very difficult to get back into it again because other things will have taken over.

Does it leave you with a sense of closure or a yearning for more? 

It depends on what the story was. If it's one where I love the characters then I'll usually want to take them on another adventure once I've finished the novel. Thief was a good example of that. I started with a Camp NaNoWriMo story that had an ensemble cast and once I'd finished I decided the more minor characters had so much more potential that I started Witness. That's currently on the back burner, but I want to get that finished before the summer, and then there are still more characters from that world that I'd like to explore.

However, if I've found the story more of a struggle to finish then I'm less likely to have a sense of yearning and more likely to just feel satisfaction at having finished the project - and dread at the thought of editing! ;)

Do you finish as many novels as you start?

No - I've always got at least one novel on the go, so therefore I've never finished them. I do try to finish ones that I start but some just don't get finished for various reasons - lack of inspiration, losing interest in the story, finding that I don't like the characters or the plot as much as I thought I did when I started, etc.