The Reason Why You Never Finish Writing The Novels You Start

There's nothing better than when that first little piece of a novel idea swoops into your mind.

Sometimes you can be in the shower, watching TV, or zoning out of whatever work task you probably should be paying a bit more attention to.

A new novel idea is like a child's most wished-for toy on Christmas.

They love it, they never let it out of their sight, they play with it almost nonstop, some of them will even drag it to bed with them insisting that they never be apart - and then they remember they have other toys, other gifts they received, or the next holiday comes around and it starts all over again.

Does this sound a bit like you and your novel?

At first, it was all you could think about, talk about, and dream about, and then you either lost interest or the next great idea came to you out of the blue and the first one joined all the others in the folder of shame containing all your other unfinished projects?

But why is this? Why can some writers never seem to see their novel through to the end?

Because writing is hard

Most writers don't understand how hard writing a book is until they are tossed into the thick of it 100 or 200 pages deep into a novel without a ladder or a flashlight.

While those on social media and those big authors seem to just keep releasing book after book after book, some of us would be lucky if we are able to finish one book in a year let alone five.

Writing can force us to deal with things that we would rather not, deep-seated fears, buried emotions, and undealt with trauma.

I wish novel writing was as easy as putting one word down in front of the other and some days it is, but other days we have to put on our safety gear and head down into the recesses of our minds to give those hidden pieces of ourselves to our characters so that when readers pick up the book they too can say, "wow, this book has a little bit of me in it."

There are also a plethora of external reasons why you may not finish these novels.

Have you grown bored with the topic of your novel? Have you had trouble pulling yourself away from that nightly TV binge session long enough to spend an hour writing?

Inspiration is not enough for a writer to write a novel. They also need the determination to write and see it through to the bittersweet end even if they may not want to.

So how do you get past this and stop yourself from abandoning your stories?

Make a plan and a deadline and stick to it

There aren't many strict rules when it comes to writing a novel. You can write it from the end to the beginning, you can write just the middle bit and then skip around as you choose. How you want to write is up to you. 

However, you need to be writing. 

If you want to stop getting stuck in the middle of the novel make a plan on when and where you are going to write and set certain deadlines.

This plan can be a chapter each week or five pages a day, Whatever works best for you and your schedule, but what you need to do is show up. 

Show up even if you don't know what to write. Read through everything you've written before and you'll be surprised how often what comes next will jump into your mind. 

If you don't write anything at least you're keeping the habit constant and proving your determination to write instead of laying on the couch letting the next episode of that show auto-play and tell yourself that you'll work on it the next day - or the next day or next week. 

Best of luck, keep going. 

Even if it's hard. 

With love, 

B.K. xo xo

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This story was originally posted on Medium.

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