“The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.” Philip Roth
I was speaking in central London and a fantasy author friend of mine arrived early to have a chat over coffee.
“How's your writing going?” I asked.
He grinned and his blue eyes lit up. “Awesome! I have 15 different projects and I'm writing 4,000 words a day. I've just got so many ideas.”
“Wow!” I replied. “Sales must be great with 15 books out there.”
His smile fell, his eyes dimmed.
“Oh, they're not published, or edited … or even finished. I've got 15 different books in first draft. I love writing new words but I'm just not interested in the rest of the process.”
This is an excerpt from The Successful Author Mindset. Available now in ebook, print and audiobook formats.
- Do you have unfinished books in the drawer or on your laptop?
- Do you start with a few pages and then move onto something new?
- Do you lose interest in the project once the initial excitement wears off?
Antidote
If you want to be a successful author, you have to develop the skills you are lacking. Writing a book has several phases, each associated with different types of energy.
Starting energy
Once you start paying attention to your creative side, ideas will never be a problem again. The problem will be deciding which ideas to pursue and turn into a book.
Once you have decided, those first few thousand words can be an adrenaline rush. The opening scenes come easily and the structure of a book appears quickly.
If you feel this way, you have starting energy and it will carry you through to perhaps 20,000 words of a full-length manuscript. (If you're writing a novella, congratulations, you're almost done!)
But if you struggle with starting, then there are a couple of things to consider:
- Don't try to write the first chapter or the first scene or the introduction first. That can come later. Try starting in the middle, or with a piece of writing you are particularly passionate about instead. Just start and fill in the rest later.
- Are you procrastinating because of fear?
- Are you being perfectionist and waiting for some kind of perfect idea or perfect situation before writing?
- Are you suffering from paralysis by analysis? I recognize this, as I spent years reading books on writing and going to seminars without doing much actual writing. Just get some words on the page!
Pushing through energy
This is the one I struggle with (along with many authors) and is known as the ‘saggy middle.'
For a novel, I generally know my opening scene, climactic scene and a couple of big scenes throughout and then I start writing. By about 25,000 words of a full-length novel, I find myself stuck and losing focus. I start to struggle.
This is a common issue and the same happens with non-fiction. Writers who outline don't suffer this so much, but instead they may find themselves bored by having to write what they've already outlined and thus revisiting the same material.
The only resolution is to set specific word count goals and keep writing. This is not a ‘how to write' page so I won't go into the details here but you can find more on writing here.
Finishing energy
If you struggle to finish anything, then don't start a new book before you've finished the one you're working on, especially if you are just starting out. It's that simple!
I'll add a caveat to that. You can have one fiction and one non-fiction first draft in progress, since I believe they use different parts of the brain. But from my own personal experience, it's difficult to work on two novels at the same time or even two non-fiction books. I start to confuse them and it all goes a little nuts.
Sure, during the writing of one book, I'll be thinking about other story ideas and I add notes in my Things app, but I won't write coherent words on a new project until I am done with the one I'm working on, or at least when it's gone to my editor.
“You must finish what you start.” Robert A. Heinlein, from Heinlein's Rules
This is an excerpt from The Successful Author Mindset. Available now in ebook, print and audiobook formats.