First Draft Pharmacy: Why Can't I Finish My Darn Book?
If you're thinking, why can't I finish my darn book? you've come to the right place. Does this sound like you?
You have one, or two, or eight files on your computer with that Great American Novel title as their file name, but when you open it, you've only written the first 10 pages or maybe even a hundred pages.
Whatever it is, you can't seem to finish writing your draft. What's up? Is it you? Is it that you can't come up with a good enough idea?
No, it's probably neither. Here I'm going to talk about the most common reasons why you can't finish your draft and how to fix them.
First, a story…
I want to start by telling you about a couple of writers that I've worked with. The first is Chris.
When I started working with Chris, she had an MFA in creative writing and felt totally confident about writing short stories. She really felt like she knew how to nail the short story form.
But she felt like despite everything she learned in her MFA program that she was really grateful for—and she had loved her program—she had never actually learned how to write a long form narrative.
She had never learned how to write a novel.
So she knew she wanted to write one, but she would always reach this wall because she didn't know what to do next and wanted some kind of guide to make sure that she was doing it well.
Another writer I worked with, Graham, also had an MFA in creative writing. And when we started working together, he had four or five half drafts he said that were "in a drawer," saved on his computer and he hadn't been able to finish any of them.
So he also had this problem of reaching that wall and not being able to go on. If this sounds like you, how do you fix it?
Mistake #1: There’s not a big question at the heart of your story
The first common problem I see is that there's not a big enough question at the heart of your story, or there is, but you just haven't recognized it for yourself yet.
If I start a book and I don't have a big enough question at the heart of it, that's on my mind. I peter out.
Now, what do I mean by that? Well, every story has a big question at the heart of it. I mean a big, thorny, human, emotional question that we care about and that we as human beings care about exploring.
The reason we're reading is because this question, even if no character ever articulates it, is underlying the story—it's hovering underneath it.
You may not know what that question is as the reader, but it's there. And as the writer, you want to articulate it to yourself. What's driving this story? Why am I writing it?
It's giving yourself a why, because when you don't have a why it's hard to keep going. Do some digging. What is the question that you're really trying to explore in this story?
Now, let me give you a couple of examples of questions, because I know this can feel really abstract without concrete examples.
A question driving a story might be, how do we find hope after losing all hope? Or, is identity something we're born with or something we can create? Or, can we truly leave behind a horrible past?
It should be a question that feels meaningful and deep. It should be more than just practical, more than just, is the couple going to get together?, or is she going to get that job?
It goes deeper than that, to what it means to be human. So you want to pick a big thorny question that interests you and that you want to explore and that will help keep you going.
Mistake #2: You have the wrong writing process
Another common mistake I see people make is that they have the wrong writing process. You've chosen a writing process that doesn't fit in your life.
A lot of times people do this because they have an idea of what a writer is supposed to be doing.
You may have heard the saying a writer writes every day. I was tormented by that saying for years. I thought that if I didn't write every day, it meant that I wasn't a writer because I read that someone famous had said that at some point.
What really liberated me from that idea was a podcast I was listening to. It was an interview with the author, Cheryl Strayed, the author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. Her first book was actually a novel called Torch.
In that interview, Cheryl shared that not only does she not write every day, she described herself as a binge writer. She said she would write for months at a time, obsessively on a project, and then months would go by when she wouldn't write a word.
Hearing her use that term was so comforting to me because it feels like how I am. I'm the same way when I'm working on a project.
I'm actively writing pretty much every day—maybe not seven days a week, but five or six of them. But then I go for months without writing a word. Am I a writer? Yes, I'm still a writer.
Find a process that works for you, and don't feel obligated to do whatever you think a writer is supposed to do.
I worked with a writer who wrote her entire novel on the notes app of her phone because she was a doctor at a hospital. That's how it worked for her, writing it on her phone in between patients.
I worked with someone else who only writes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and someone who only writes on the weekends.
So find what works for you. What kind of writer are you? There is no right or wrong way. Do you want to dictate your story? Great. You can dictate your story. Take walks around the block and talk into your phone. That still counts as writing.
Mistake #3: Thinking you’re the reason you’ve hit a wall
The other common mistake I see writers make is thinking that the reason they have hit a wall is them, when really just something needs to happen in the story.
So here's what'll happen a lot. A writer will tell me, "Oh my gosh, Mary, I have reached a dead end. I wrote 50 pages and I have nothing. This was a dead end.
“I don't have anywhere to go from here. I think I have to start over. I think I have to have a new idea. I guess this just isn't the book I'm going to write."
And usually I'll say, "Wait, don't act so fast. What this could mean Is that something just needs to happen in your story. Yes, you've reached a wall, but it's not the end of this project.
“The wall you've reached is the end of this phase in your story. Something more needs to happen in the story."
No, the reason maybe you've stopped writing isn't because you, as a person, lack discipline, or you had a bad idea to begin with.
It's because you've reached a point in the book where the reader, and you as the writer are both thinking, all right, something's gotta give, we want something new to happen. Now we need to shake things up.
So if this is the case, I recommend sitting down, not with your draft, but with a fresh page and brainstorm what could happen.
I want something to happen and it should be something that's going to shake things up. Don't judge your ideas, just brainstorm.
Aliens could land, a hurricane could hit the world, the couple could get together, this person could get their dream job, could find out someone who they thought was a stranger was their father.
Don't judge any of your ideas, just write them all down with the goal of shaking things up. My guess is that something is going to excite you, and when you drop that into your story, it'll bring it back to you and it'll help you keep going.
Mistake #4: You’re mixing up the writing and revising mindsets
Common mistake number four is that you're mixing up the writing and revising mindsets.
Writing and revising are different mindsets. They use completely different skillsets. They feel completely different and they should be done at different times.
When you're writing, you don't want to be judging. You don't want to be analyzing. Yes, you're going to have a little critical voice on your shoulder, but you're trying not to listen to that voice.
You're trying not to let that voice take the driver's seat. You want to get in the flow. You want to just get the story down and that's why I don't read back what I've written.
I just keep going and try to get the story down. When you let the revising mindset come in during reading, it can bring you to a screeching halt.
That means doing things like reading back what you've written and deciding it's not good enough and starting to constantly tweak it or feeling like, oh, I need to start over. Because I don't like how that scene went.
These are the kind of things that come later while you're revising.
The way I like to think about it is, writing is just getting the story down in one of its forms. Revising is making it look good.
It's actually putting clothes on it, getting it dressed to go out, and polishing it up. So we don't need to be doing that when we're writing.
When we try to, it can lead to paralysis or what I've heard called a creative cul-de-sac, which is just like getting into a cul-de-sac and going in circles, and not making progress.
Mistake #5: You’re trying to write the wrong kind of book
The last mistake you may be making is that you may be trying to write the wrong kind of book. I have a question for you. Do you want to write the book you're writing?
Not do you think you should be writing it because you can, or because someone told you it would make a lot of money, or because you have some idea of what constitutes a very "high literature" book.
But do you want to be writing this book?
I think this is a really important question to ask yourself and answer honestly. For me in the past, sometimes the answer has been no. I didn't realize that until I really got honest and asked myself this question.
If you don't want to write a book, it's really hard to finish it. It's really hard to finish a book that you're writing for any reason, other than the fact that you want to be writing it.
If you are now freaked out because you think maybe the answer is no, it's okay. Now you're just going to ask yourself, what do you want to write? Write that. Often it's what you like to read.
What I find sometimes is someone will have pressured themselves to write the Great American Novel when what they love doing is reading cozy mysteries or reading romance.
When they allow themselves to write the thing that they love to read, everything gets better. Their writing is more prolific. They're happier doing it. They do it well and everything just clicks.
That tends to be the better book anyway.
Ready to write your book?
So once you have a book that you want to write, I want to teach you how to write it.
As a three time published novelist and writing coach, I have put together a free training for you on how to write your dream book while holding down a full-time job and keeping your life.
In this training I teach you the exact process I use to write my books. All you have to do to get the free training is click below to apply to my program, The Book Incubator.
The application is just two questions. They'll take under five minutes. There's no obligation to join the program, but if you're admitted, I'll send you that training right away. It's really good. It's time well spent. You won't regret it.
