The Mind Games of Writing

Every writer knows this moment. The document is open, the cursor keeps blinking away, and the blank page suddenly feels bigger than every idea bouncing around inside your head. The story is already there, at least in some form, yet the first sentence often feels harder to write than the final hundred pages of a completed manuscript.

Sometimes you even have a full plot outline sitting in front of you. You know how the story begins, you know how it ends, and you know many of the important moments in between. Even so, the project can feel so enormous that you start wondering how all those ideas could ever become a finished novel.

This is exactly where many people give up. They stop seeing the next scene, the next paragraph, or the next line of dialogue. Instead, they see the entire mountain and forget that every climb is made up of individual steps.

Before my first NaNoWriMo in 2011, I honestly never believed I could write a novel in a single month. At the time, I was already pleased with myself whenever I managed to finish a short story. The idea of producing a complete manuscript in thirty days felt almost impossible.

Back then, I kept focusing on the number 50,000. Fifty thousand words sounded like an enormous amount of writing. The figure felt bigger than any motivation I could possibly summon.

It became even more intimidating when I looked at the daily target. To reach the goal, I needed to write 1,667 words every single day. Between work, responsibilities, everyday life, and all the unexpected things that regularly get in the way of our plans, it felt like an impossible task.

A lot of writers make exactly the same mistake. They try to take in the entire journey at once. In their minds, they're attempting to write all fifty thousand words on the very first day, and it's hardly surprising that they end up feeling overwhelmed.

The interesting thing is that the challenge barely changes when we change our perspective. The number stays the same. The novel stays the same. Only the way we look at it changes.

At some point, I started looking at the task differently. Instead of focusing on 1,667 words a day, I asked myself how many words that actually worked out to per hour. The answer surprised me more than I expected.

If we assume eight hours of sleep, that leaves sixteen waking hours in the day. Spread the daily target across those sixteen hours and you're looking at roughly 105 words per hour. Suddenly, the very same challenge starts to look quite different.

One hundred and five words is about two average-sized paragraphs. Most experienced writers can produce that in a matter of minutes. Even on a slower day, it's a far more manageable figure than the idea of writing an entire novel.

This is where the real magic of smaller goals begins. Our brains respond very differently to something that feels achievable. While 50,000 words can seem overwhelming, 105 words feels surprisingly manageable.

That is exactly why small milestones work so well. They reduce the mental weight of the task and turn a huge project into a series of smaller jobs that can be tackled one after another. A mountain becomes a path.

Things become even more interesting when we look at what happens after those first 105 words. Very few writers stop the moment they've reached their target. Most of us carry on writing.

Perhaps a dialogue scene is flowing particularly well. Perhaps the story has reached an exciting turning point. Perhaps we're simply enjoying ourselves. Before long, 105 words becomes 200, 300, or even 500.

Without even planning it, you've started building a cushion. You're creating breathing room. You're gaining time you didn't even realise you needed.

That cushion changes everything. Writing starts feeling less like a race against the clock. Instead of constantly trying to catch up, you begin to enjoy the reassuring feeling of being ahead of schedule.

Psychologically, that makes a massive difference. Pressure creates stress, and stress has a habit of strangling creativity. The moment the pressure eases, ideas often begin to flow far more freely.

Many writers believe motivation comes first and productivity follows afterwards. In reality, it's often the other way round. Productivity creates motivation.

Every page you write gives you a small success. Every completed scene proves that progress is happening. Progress creates confidence, and confidence creates motivation.

Of course, there will be difficult days as well. No writer produces the same amount of work every day with the same level of enthusiasm. Creativity rarely moves in a straight line.

Some days every sentence feels like hard work. Dialogue sounds wooden, descriptions feel flat, and the story suddenly seems less exciting than it did the day before. Those days are simply part of being a writer.

That is precisely why small goals matter so much. When you're only focusing on the next 105 words, a slower day hardly matters. You don't need to write a perfect novel. You only need to write the next section.

Eventually, a good day comes along again. The characters feel alive. The scenes click into place. The story seems to carry itself forward.

On those days, you'll often write far more than you planned. Your cushion grows larger. The pressure continues to shrink.

Before long, the maths changes again. Words that once felt urgent have already been written. The daily target starts to lose some of its power because you've built a reserve.

Even when life gets in the way, the situation remains manageable. An appointment crops up. A responsibility demands your attention. A day disappears. These things happen to every writer.

When you've built a little breathing room, those setbacks feel far less threatening. Instead of panicking, you adjust and keep going. One hundred and five words an hour might become 120 words an hour.

Even then, it's still a manageable task. The story remains under control. The goal remains achievable.

This is why I believe many people don't fail because of the novel itself. They fail because of their perception of the novel. They focus on the finished book long before they've written the first paragraph.

A novel is never fifty thousand words all at once. It's a collection of scenes, sentences, and choices. Every page begins with a handful of words on a blank sheet.

The next time you're staring at your plot outline and feeling intimidated by its size, try something different. Forget the chapter count for a moment. Forget the page count. Forget the finish line altogether.

Focus instead on the next hundred words. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Right now.

One hundred words seems insignificant. One hundred words feels almost too small to matter. Yet those tiny units have the power to create entire books.

Every bestseller was written one word at a time. Every famous story began with a blank page. Every writer you admire once stood exactly where you are standing now.

The blank page loses its power the moment you stop trying to see the entire novel on it. All you need to see is enough space for the next sentence. Everything else grows one word at a time.

In the end, a novel is rarely created through one enormous act of effort. It's built through countless small decisions to keep writing. That is why a finished book often begins, not with a grand plan, but with a simple choice.

Write the next hundred words. Then write the next hundred after that. One day you'll be holding a finished manuscript in your hands and wondering why that mountain ever seemed so impossible to climb.