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The Art of Finishing: Albert Flynn DeSilver on Conquering Creative Procrastination
by Writing Workshops Staff
2 weeks ago
There's a particular kind of torture reserved for writers: the half-finished manuscript that haunts your desktop, the promising poem abandoned mid-stanza, the memoir that exists only in fragments scattered across years of false starts. It's the creative purgatory of perpetual beginning, where inspiration strikes like lightning but completion remains as elusive as catching smoke.
Enter Albert Flynn DeSilver, an internationally published poet and author who has made an art form of completion itself. With several books of poetry, the acclaimed memoir Beamish Boy (named one of KIRKUS Reviews' "Best Books of 2013"), and the transformative writing guide Writing as a Path to Awakening—which BUSTLE magazine called "A Must Read!"—DeSilver has mastered what so many writers struggle with: actually finishing what they start.
"I am obsessed with completion," DeSilver admits with the kind of earnest intensity that makes you believe he might actually hold the secret to literary alchemy. "There is a lot of vulnerability and exposure when you complete something, but the act of completion is an empowering one."
It's this obsession that has led him to create The Art of Completion: How to Finish a Start & Stop Writing Project 4-Week Zoom Intensive, a workshop designed specifically for the chronically unfinished—the eternal dreamers, epic procrastinators, and those caught in the cycle of creative starts and stops.
DeSilver's approach blends the practical with the profound, combining actionable techniques with meditative practices that address the deeper psychological barriers to completion. His teaching philosophy is as paradoxical as it is effective: "Kind, generous, loving and simultaneously insistent and firm." It's a balance that has earned him praise from bestselling authors like Cheryl Strayed, who calls him "a gem, a joy to work with."
For writers trapped in the liminal space between conception and completion, DeSilver offers a roadmap to the finish line. In our conversation, he reveals the "not-so-secret secret steps" to breaking free from start-and-stop syndrome, transcending writer's block, and finally crossing that most elusive threshold—the one that separates dreamers from finishers.
Writing Workshops: Hi, Albert. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Albert Flynn DeSilver: I am an internationally-published poet and writer writing in multiple genres. I am the author of several books of poems, the memoir Beamish Boy, the nonfiction book Writing as a Path to Awakening, a book of essays called Singletrack Mind on the spirituality of riding bicycles in wild places, numerous articles on everything from outdoor adventure to mindfulness meditation and creativity, as well as a forthcoming book of essays and a couple of novel projects. I got my MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BFA in Photography from the University of Colorado Boulder. I also studied at the School for International Training in East Africa.
Writing Workshops: What made you want to teach this specific class? Is it something you are focusing on in your own writing practice? Have you noticed a need to focus on this element of craft?
Albert Flynn DeSilver: I know one of the biggest struggles for writers and other creatives is staying focused, finding the time to write, and actually completing. There is a lot of vulnerability and exposure when you complete something. I am obsessed with completion, and have managed to complete dozens of book projects, even if they are small or seemingly insignificant according to the market, the act of completion is an empowering one. I love helping people overcome the self-imposed hindrances to finishing.
Writing Workshops: Give us a breakdown of how the course is going to go. What can the students expect? What is your favorite part about this class you've dreamed up?
Albert Flynn DeSilver: I always start by creating a sense of community and connection, then we identify the challenges, and following that dive right into actionable solutions, techniques for overcoming these obstacles! My favorite practices are meditative exercises for the busy-minded and imaginative among us! The end result of this session will be completing something small but compelling.
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Albert Flynn DeSilver: Marguerite Yourcenar is maybe not the first, but certainly the most-lasting. The poems of Jack Spicer literally changed my life, and then Hart Crane and Federico García Lorca. I adore Ruth Ozeki and have had the pleasure of interviewing her for my YouTube channel— to name but a few.
Writing Workshops: What are you currently reading?
Albert Flynn DeSilver: Currently reading Freedom and Death by Nikos Kazantzakis.
Writing Workshops: How do you choose what you're working on? When do you know it is the next thing you want to write all the way to THE END?
Albert Flynn DeSilver: I spend time in silence, listening, spend time observing the world tuning into what's resonating, what I'm drawn to reading and what's emotionally stirring me up, and checking in regularly to see if it won't leave me alone. And then I know to go deep or go home.
Writing Workshops: Where do you find inspiration?
Albert Flynn DeSilver: Everywhere, honestly, in every breath, in every moment of this miraculous life. It is constantly radiating when we are open to it, and in the good-hearted people, their stories, in silence and stillness, and in art museums and galleries, in traveling to experience and commune with other cultures and traditions, most deeply out on the trail in the wilderness, by the ocean, speaking to the mountains, communing with the little Junco birds in my yard, opening my heart to my wife and friends—even when it's difficult, and of course, reading, reading, reading, and writing, writing, writing, curious to see what this wack-a-doodle mind will cook up next.
Writing Workshops: What is the best piece of writing wisdom you've received that you can pass along to our readers? How did it impact your work? Why has this advice stuck with you?
Albert Flynn DeSilver: The notion of the shitty first draft, that I'm not expected to create some brilliant work of art the first time I hit the page, and that it's an evolution that comes into luminosity with constant attention, commitment, devotion, and repetition. The reason this advice has stuck with me is because it's true, it has proven itself true over and over and over again. The other piece of advice that I share with my students a lot is simply that a writer is someone who writes not someone who is published. I'm constantly amazed at how often people deny their creativity, deny their authorship simply because of perceived insignificance. A writer is someone who writes, that's it. It's that simple.
Writing Workshops: What is your favorite book to recommend on the craft of writing? Why this book?
Albert Flynn DeSilver: Well, that's easy of course it's Writing as a Path to Awakening, and I say that only half jokingly because I truly believe that 99% of the time we're overthinking it, and if we would simply spend time in stillness and silence in order to make room for the creativity and the unbound language that arises—then we would be free, and that's the only thing this book seeks to impart and yet there are also stories and helpful practices to get people on the path to awakening to their innate divine creative genius.
Writing Workshops: Bonus question: What's your teaching vibe?
Albert Flynn DeSilver: Kind, generous, loving and simultaneously insistent and firm.
Learn more about Albert's upcoming class, The Art of Completion: How to Finish a Start & Stop Writing Project 4-Week Zoom Intensive with Albert Flynn DeSilver, and enroll now to avoid the waitlist.
Albert Flynn DeSilver is the author of several books of poems, the memoir Beamish Boy (one of KIRKUS Reviews “Best Books of 2013” and the popular nonfiction book for writers Writing as a Path to Awakening from Sounds True/Macmillan, which BUSTLE magazine called “A Must Read!,” and Poets & Writers magazine chose as one of their “Best Books for Writers” in 2018. Albert has published work in more than 100 literary journals and magazines, including ZYZZYVA, Chicago Review, New American Writing, Hanging Loose, Writer’s Digest, Adventure Journal, and elsewhere. Albert has taught and shared the stage with many bestselling authors including Cheryl Strayed, Elizabeth Gilbert, Maxine Hong Kingston, and many others. He has taught at various Colleges, Universities, institutes, and writing conferences nationally for more than 25 years.
