Almost Finished Gets You Nothing And Nowhere

While it’s true that you’re a writer if you write, it’s also true that, if you have a goal to be a published writer (or, better yet, a self-supporting writer), you need to finish what you start. You can’t send a half finished manuscript to an editor. You can’t self-publish part of a story or, worse, a first draft.

So why do we do this? There are a lot of reasons for starting something new before the old is finished.

· You’re trying to avoid the previous project that has gotten “too hard.” Surely the next one will be easier!

· You got bored with the last manuscript or felt like you’d been working on it forever. Surely the next one will go faster!

· The old book was so flawed, you probably wouldn’t be able to fix it. So you’re not even going to try. Surely the next one will be better!

· Finishing is scary. If your goal is publication, finishing means you have to submit it to an editor agent, or you have to hit “publish.” That’s a scary step that you never have to take if you never finish. Surely you’ll be ready after the next book!

If you’re on the Fail to Finish Team, one or more of those excuses probably sounds familiar.

The problem with all of that is, of course, that if you never finish, your career is over before it’s even begun. There are thousands of would-be writers out there with unfinished manuscripts. (How many times has someone said to you, upon hearing you’re a writer, “Oh, yeah! I started writing a book, too! ”?)

But you want to be a real writer, a paid writer. You don’t want to be a would-be writer saying to other “real” writers that you, too, have “started writing a book” at every cocktail party you attend for the rest of your life.

So How Do You Finish?

Once you’ve completed one book, you know you can do it again. So how do you break this cycle of unfinished projects and get to the finish line?

· Stop making excuses about why starting something else is the right thing to do. You don’t need to write book 2 in a series when you haven’t finished book 1. The next book is not going to be easier that this one. They are all hard.

· Be thoughtful about what you start. Just because you think of a fantastic idea doesn’t mean it’s the right idea for you. Or the right idea right now. Keep a notebook when you think of something new. It’ll be there when you finish the one you’re working on now.

· Commit to the finish. Look at your current half-finished projects and pick one. Work through the hard part and complete it.

· Don’t worry about perfection. That’s what revisions are for.

· While you’re working, visualize what it will feel like to finish. A bit of future projecting can go a long way toward motivating yourself to proceed to the finish line.

What you’ll find when you’ve completed that first novel (or the second, or tenth) is a profound feeling of accomplishment. Your confidence will grow with each finished project.

So pick a project and feel the magic of finishing.

“Whatever it takes to finish things, finish. You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished.” — Neil Gaiman

~ Shannon McKelden

https://www.rockyourwriting.com/2016/04/magic-art-finishing/

You have treasures hidden within you – extraordinary treasures… And bringing those treasures to light takes work and faith and focus and courage and hours of devotion, and the clock is ticking. – Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

I have a finishing problem. Not for articles like this one, or blog posts. I even wrote a short story in a few weeks at the beginning of this year, but anything longer or larger in scope makes me freeze up.

Ten years ago while in graduate school, I wrote a short story about tragic loss and survivor’s guilt. When my professor suggested it could be turned into a novel, I leapt at the chance. Though I always dreamt of writing books, I never had an idea that felt expansive enough. This could be it, I decided, and wrote a hundred plus pages for my thesis.

Then two life-changing events happened: my mother died and not long after I became pregnant. Somehow I finished a draft of my novel days before my baby arrived.

That baby? She’s now seven. After a long hiatus, I rewrote the manuscript at least twice and it’s closer to done than it’s ever been. And yet, I’ve been avoiding it.

Excuses pour out: holidays, children, laundry, life.

But the truth is I’m stuck. I feel like a marathon runner, inches away from the finish line, but instead of springing forward, I sink to the ground.

What I’m struggling with is not original. In fact, it’s quite common. You’ve probably dealt with this problem in one form or another: resistance.

Steven Pressfield has written an entire book about the topic, called The War of Art. He believes everyone—not just artists and writers—must overcome resistance. Not once or twice, but every day of our lives.

For me, and I imagine for many others, resistance digs its claws in most deeply at the beginning and the end of projects.

How can we face the blank page? How can we finish what we start?

These are elemental questions that all writers face, over and over again. They don’t get easier to answer, but after a while, patterns emerge. If we can become familiar with our own tendencies and habits, we can manifest our dreams.

Here are three simple steps to help you begin – or finish what you started:

1. Acknowledge and identify your resistance.