The Faerie Queene was planned in twelve books and completed in six — six and a fragment, if we count the Mutabilitie Cantos, which I do, the way one counts a postscript that outshines the letter. Spenser died with his design half-built, and the poem is not diminished by this. It is, if anything, enlarged: the unbuilt wing lets the weather in.
We speak of unfinished works apologetically, as though completion were a moral state. But a cathedral under scaffolding tells you more about cathedrals than a finished one does. You can see how the thing is held up.
This is a blog by someone writing a novel. You see the argument I am building toward.