You’re a serious writer. You’ve been pursuing the dream for a while. You’ve amassed several thousand words on one or more projects, read books about characterization and plot, attended writers’ conferences, and created a daily writing practice.
And yet you haven’t finished your book. Or maybe you have several you’ve started but haven’t finished. Maybe you’ve finished one but then struggled to finish anymore after that.
Writing a book is never easy, and each one presents new challenges to overcome. If you’re struggling to finish your books, you’re not alone, but if you want to separate yourself from the pack and see your writing dreams come true, you must find a way to manage the journey all the way to “the end.”
Note: This is a guest post by Colleen M. Story, she inspires writers to overcome modern-day challenges and find creative fulfillment in their work. Find free chapters of her books, “Writer Get Noticed!“and “Overwhelmed Writer Rescue,” as well as her FREE mini-course on finishing your book on her motivational site Writing and Wellness. She also welcomes connections on Twitter.
Below are four of the most common reasons why finishing a book is hard, along with action steps to take to get you closer to where you want to be.
1. A Book Is Much More than a Good Idea
We all have good ideas for books. Ask anyone who’s ever thought about writing one and you’ll hear them. Amateurs think all you need is a good idea and you’re set.
Real writers know the truth of the matter, but that doesn’t stop us from being distracted by our active imaginations. It’s probably happened to you. Halfway through your novel, you started to struggle. You knew something was wrong but you didn’t know how to fix it.
As you floundered around, your brain started coming up with new ideas for new stories. Because you’re a creative person, you couldn’t help but feel seduced by these new ideas. They sounded fresher, more intriguing, and more exciting than the one you were working on.
Surely it would be better, you thought, to set your current work aside and pursue one of those superior ideas?
Unfortunately, it’s all a hoax. No matter how great your idea, it will rarely be easy to write a book-length manuscript. Instead, you’ll go off on that new idea and end up stuck all over again.
Action Step: When new ideas occur to you, write them down and store them somewhere in a box or a file on your computer. Then go back to your project and continue working until it is finished. Do not let another idea call you away from the one you’re already working on until that one is complete.
2. Finishing a Book is Totally Up to You
For most everything else we do, someone is around to hold us accountable. At work, you must answer to your manager and/or boss. At home, your family has certain expectations of you. Even the organizations for which you volunteer expect you to follow through.
When writing a book, however, there is no one to check up on you. There is no performance review and no one to see about your progress. That can be freeing, but it can also make it far too easy to shirk your duty to the creative work.
Don’t feel like writing? No one will notice if you take the day off. Feeling frustrated with your story? You can set it aside and no one will complain. Tired of the constant grind of writing every day? You can stop it all now without fear of any serious consequences.
At the end of the day, it’s far easier to quit than it is to continue, and a lot of people take the easy way out.
Action Step: Find out what’s motivating you to do this, and keep it fresh in your mind. Why do you want to write this book? Answer that question and post your answer somewhere you can see it regularly.
Then motivate yourself to keep going in ways that work for you. Track your progress. Ask other people to hold you accountable to your goals. Join a writer’s group. Set up rewards for each milestone you reach. Know yourself well enough to know what you need to do to drag yourself across the finish line.
3. Finishing a Book is Hard
When you read a good book by a master author, it looks easy. The story flows from beginning to end. The characters come to life on the page. The settings are so real you feel like you’re there.
Of course, you can do the same thing, you think.
And then you get to the dreaded middle of the book, and everything you thought you knew goes out the window. Your plot feels unhinged. Your characters are acting strange. The pacing is slow. Now what?
You start and stop again. You consult books on characterization and plot. You jump to the end, write that, then go back, but you can’t bridge the gap. You set one draft aside and start over with another, but you get stuck again.
Writing can be bliss at times, but at other times, it can be downright torturous. It’s like being in a maze and not being able to find your way out. Worse—it’s like being in a maze and not being able to find the most exciting, heart-pounding, emotionally moving way out, and only that one will do.
It’s hard. You spend months banging your head against a wall. You turn here and there for help, all to no avail. You feel like a failure. The beautiful novel you had so many hopes for is falling flat on its face.
Is it any wonder so many writers quit?
Action Step: Don’t quit. No matter what, don’t quit. Try again. And again. One-hundred times if you need to. Ask for help. Hire a writing mentor. Take an online course. Read another book. Outline your book and take a bird’s eye view of the plot. Sit down and have a talk with your characters, one by one, and record what you discover. Keep going. Don’t quit. If you hang in there, the answer will come.
I know. It took me five years to figure out my last novel. When I finally did, I felt like I’d traveled the Sahara and finally arrived at an oasis. It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had in my life. The harder your struggle, the sweeter the reward. Real writers don’t quit.
4. Finishing Your Book Matters to No One as Much as it Matters to You
Wouldn’t it be nice if, when you’re struggling, you had someone to tell you it was all worthwhile? If you were like one of those authors in the movies with an agent waiting breathlessly for your next story? If you had thousands of readers clamoring for your next work to hit the shelves?
For a very few writers, this is the case. For most of us, the world doesn’t notice if we publish another book or not. Most people don’t care.
Sure, our friends and family might wonder. But at the end of the day, life goes on. The mail still shows up every day (or almost every day). The planes still fly. The banks still operate. People still go back and forth to the grocery store. Book or no book, it doesn’t matter.
We realize this reality somewhere along the way. We know it, deep inside. The world will survive just fine without this story. And that makes it difficult to keep going when the going gets tough because in the end, who cares?
Action Step: Ask yourself: Does this book matter to me? If your answer is “yes,” honor yourself enough to know that you must finish it. For most of us, writing is a calling. It’s something we’re compelled to do. If you turn your back on it, you’ll be turning your back on yourself. Your potential. Your growth as a person.
You must honor yourself and your creativity enough to go where it leads you.
Writing has many rewards beyond those that come from the outside world. Remind yourself of what finishing means to you, and then get back to work.
