Inspiration and Motivation in Writing Needed

My entire life I’ve always had a thing for writing. I absolutely love it and can’t get enough of it. And when some of my friends told me about Mibba I thought I was going to die of happiness. So now I have a Mibba and I’m kind of new at it but I love being able to post my stories and poems.

However I kind of have a problem and I’ve had this problem for a while, pretty much as long as I’ve been writing, which has been since about third grade. My problem is that I always get so inspired to start stories but I can never finish them. I always get myself down and think my work isn’t good enough and I end up losing my inspiration and the work forever remains unfinished. And then I resolve to not write ever again. But then I get all twitchy and stuff and feel the need the write again and then I get inspired by one thing or another and then I start to write again and the process continues where I get all depressed and so on and so forth, you get the picture. Poetry I don’t have that same problem with; it’s just stories, not short stories, but novels. And no matter what I try to do I just cannot fix this problem.

For example my first story on Mibba is called “Rocket- Part1: Guitar”. I got so excited when I finally completed the first chapter of it and was able to post it for people to read. I was so excited that I decided to post other things too and have several works going at one time. So I started looking for more inspiration for more stories. Needless to say I started getting stressed out and I kept looking back at “Rocket” and then I started thinking that it wasn’t good enough and that I should just delete it and write something else instead that I’m more interested in and will have a better chance of finishing.

I thought Mibba would cure me of this problem and encourage and motivate me to finish my stories but so far I think I’m wrong. I really want to be cured of this problem! I know I’m not majoring in English and my career path isn’t to be a full-time writer, but I am convinced that writing stories will always be a part of who I am and will follow me for the rest of my life. Not that I’m complaining or anything. Like I said before, I have a pure love for writing; it’s in my blood. But it won’t be any fun for me if I can’t cure myself of this problem of not finishing my works. I want to write a novel so bad! It’s killing me! I’ve tried so many times but needless to say I have failed each time. Throughout my life I have started writing countless novels that I had high hopes and dreams of finishing, but they really never had a chance. I’ve also written numerous poems and short stories and I am proud to them my own. However, my main goal is to write a novel and finish it and maybe even publish it (but for now I’m sticking to the “finishing it” part).

So what I want more than anything is inspiration and motivation from other writers like myself. If anyone could offer me any advice on what to do to motivate myself into finishing a novel that would be wonderful. Maybe my problem is finding topics that I’m not too interested in writing about. Or I’m just lazy. Or anything else. But any advice is welcome. Thank you, all!