6 Things That Are Keeping You From Finishing Your Novel

When that first little spark hits you for a new novel idea it’s usually off to the races! You begin strong typing out page after page of words and thoughts and characters who go through great struggles and make hard choices.

But then you stop.

Progress comes to a crawl before ultimately someone puts a brick down on the break petal and the story just goes no more.

Before you toss all that work you did in the trash or let it sit around and gather dust, let’s see if we can find the reason that you may have stopped writing.

Procrastination

Let’s be honest — it’s possible that what’s stopping you from finishing your novel.. is you.

Procrastination can take many forms. You could just be avoiding your writing area, saying you’ll get to it later and later until it’s too late and you’ll try again tomorrow — and then the cycle repeats and repeats and repeats until months have passed and you haven’t added a single word.

The other form of procrastination comes in the form of productive procrastination.

Have you uttered a phrase that sounds something like — oh I’ll write after I fold the laundry.. do other dishes.. mow the ceiling.. vacuum the garage walls.

Stop getting in your own way. Find the time or make the time to write.

Lack Of Planning

One of the things that could be stopping you could be the lack of planning in your novel itself.

You started with the smallest hint of an idea and attempted to hit the ground running with only that.

And that’s all you’ve been able to write.

Take the time to make an outline, blueprint, roadmap — whatever you want to call it — and flesh out the rest of the idea before writing or before you write anymore.

Self-Doubt

If a runner halfway through a marathon starts to believe that they have no chance of winning the race — they’re going to slow down and give themselves no chance.

Maybe you’ve begun to think that you’re not going to make it as a writer or that no one's going to read your book.

These thoughts need to be banished from your mind if you want to have any chance of making it across your novel's finish line.

High Expectations

Maybe you thought that when you set out to write your novel it was only going to take maybe a month max before you wrote that final word.

Sorry, but your first draft can take you anywhere from a month to even a year depending on how much time you dedicate to writing it.

Or maybe you thought that first draft was going to start out looking like all those other ones available at a local bookstore near you.

Sorry, but your first draft — is going to need work no matter how well you write it. Things change from when you first start writing to when you write the final words. Characters need to be added or taken out. The same with dialogue and entire chapters.

The magic happens in editing. You’ll get there

Distractions

Have you ever sat down to write but first thought you needed to put on an epic writing playlist to get you into the mood?

Next thing you know it’s five hours later, the sun has set and you’ve got nothing done and you still haven’t found the perfect playlist.

When you sit down to write —

Sit down to write.

Don’t check your emails, social media, texts, or anything else before writing. Keep your go-to playlist as a bookmark so that it’s readily available and just start writing.

Burnout

It’s possible that you just started running a marathon that you hadn’t properly trained for.

You can’t go from never writing to setting goals of 10k words a day.

That can be too much even for the seasoned author.

Try easing back into writing, setting a realistic and reachable goal and as you improve and pass it with flying colors go ahead and bump it up.

And there is no reason to force yourself to write every day. Just like jobs don’t make you work seven days a week, you can’t expect that you can write seven days a week without getting sick and tired of it.

. . .

Writing a novel isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the hardest thing.

Don’t be so hard on yourself.

With love,

B.K xo xo

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