7 Ways to Get Unstuck and Finish Writing Your Book
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If you’re struggling to finish your book, you’re not alone. Almost every writer, at some point, gets stuck.
In fact, I believe that you should struggle to complete your manuscript. If you sail through a first and second draft without ever hitting the doldrums, you likely haven’t challenged yourself sufficiently in either the depth of your topic, the nuances of the narrative, or the meaning you want to impart. Getting stuck is in many ways a necessary experience in ultimately crafting a manuscript that you will be proud to publish — something that will have an impact on the lives of your readers.
So, if you’re stuck right now, don't be too hard on yourself. Lots of good things are happening below the surface, even if you are not actively thinking too much about your manuscript. (At the very least, you’re getting recharged by taking a break.)
Writing a book is like making wine. You can’t skip the fermentation process. If being stuck means you’re not adding to your word count every day, the story, the characters and the messages are still being developed inside you. They are fermenting. You might not realize it but I assure you it’s happening. I’ve written numerous books and worked with dozens of authors. I’ve seen first-hand how time away from a manuscript can produce many benefits to the project as a whole.
And yet, at some point, you may need some tools and inspiration to return to your laptop, plant yourself in your seat, and just get ’er done. Here are seven tips to help you do just that and finish your book.
1. Stop aiming for perfection
It took me ten years to write my first book. Finally, I asked someone I respected for advice. She said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” At first, I thought she was joking. But Marcia recognized my problem right away. She continued, “Any book you write, even if it’s not as good as you’d like it to be, will impact many more people than the perfect book you never finish.” Within six months, I had my less-than-perfect manuscript written. The book went on to sell over 200,000 copies.
Perfection, if it’s ever attained in a book, is achieved during rewrites. Second, third, even fourth drafts of your manuscript can inch you closer to your masterpiece. But, never, ever let the quest for flawlessness stop you from finishing a draft at all. Aim high, but don’t aim unattainably high.
2. Always leave a few breadcrumbs
When you’re done writing for the day, leave a note to yourself about what you’re going to write next. Don’t completely exhaust a storyline, anecdote, idea, or lesson. Keep something in the tank. Sprinkle a few breadcrumbs to get you started tomorrow. If you feel yourself scraping the bottom of the barrel, stop scraping and craft a short message about how you’re going to pick up right where you’re leaving off. This was one of Ernest Hemmingway’s favourite tricks of the trade. If this technique worked for a writer of his calibre, it will surely work for you.
3. Join a writing group (or get a writing buddy)
Humans are social creatures. This is for good reason: other people act as sounding boards for us, a way of keeping us on the straight-and-narrow. And while writing is one of the more solitary tasks we can perform, we writers still require the support of others.
One form that support can take is a writing buddy or writing group — anybody with whom you can share updates on your work. This is even better if your writing buddy/group creates a routine of its own, such as a certain day of the week where everyone shares an updated manuscript.
Working alongside other people provides an extra impetus to get your writing done by making you accountable to someone other than yourself. It’s a sad truth, but we humans are generally quite skilled at fooling ourselves. “I had a good reason for not writing yesterday, I swear!” Fooling other people, however, can be much tougher. Having a friend, or a group of friends, with whom you regularly share work gives structure to your writing — it gives you an end-goal for which you need to strive, and (for those interested) it can even add a competitive element to your writing (though that is by no means essential).
I highly recommend a writing group or a buddy that includes a “writing sprints” component. This is where you do timed writing sessions along with everyone else in your group where the primary goal is quantity. No one assesses or judges what you produce. It’s all about the numbers. For example, AJ Harper is a book coach and ghostwriter who has collaborated on multiple New York Times bestsellers. Her writing sprints group is legendary. On her website she boasts that her students have written 1.3 million words in the last year during her organized sprints. That’s how books get finished.
4. Get another set of eyes on the manuscript
I often compare writing a book to raising a child. You want your book to become a success when it finally grows up and leaves home. In other words: you’re invested, which is good. But sometimes you get too close to the writing. You can’t see the forest for the trees. Studies show that the more familiar we become with a project or process, the less likely we are to make a significant change. The constant exposure to the same ideas and sentences wears a groove in your brain that gets deeper and deeper. You become less able to imagine a new path forward the longer you work on it. But sometimes that direction isn’t what’s best for its success.
Book writing benefits from having an impartial person give you some feedback on the work in progress. Of course, there is no shortage of professional assistance available. FriesenPress has very talented editors who can give you an evaluation of your manuscript and offer a clear path forward to completing it. At my company, Storyglu, we provide hands-on writing coaching support to help you reach the finish line.
But there are all sorts of people you probably know who could help you find the inspiration to finish your book. In my immediate family alone, I have a playwright, a retired English teacher, a magazine editor, and a lawyer with an honours degree in English literature. Your favourite barista might have a masters in comparative literature. Your partner’s second-cousin-once-removed could have written and self-published their own memoir.
The feedback you receive from an unpaid or non-literary contact can prove invaluable when it comes to finishing your book, even just by giving you a bit of distance from the material. They can represent the reader’s experience. Even when someone who reviews your writing is way off target with their comments, there’s a potential payoff. You might then realize you’re actually on the right track for your goals already. Then you’ll be motivated to power through completing your draft.
5. Establish a routine
Writing is work. Authors love to see it as a hobby, as something fun, but considering writing as something done only for leisure, or even as a creative act fueled only by inspiration, can end up trapping us in an unproductive mindset. Few writers are afforded the luxury to write full-time for pay — congratulations to those who have managed that achievement, but for the rest of us, we need to fit our writing in when and where we can. Deferring our precious writing time to some distant period when we feel “good” about it, or when we feel “inspired” can all too easily end up becoming a cycle of procrastination. What we need instead is to establish a habit of writing, even when we don’t want to write. Treating writing as valuable work that needs to be accomplished helps avoid the pitfalls of procrastination.
Establishing a writing routine can sound daunting, but it needn’t be. When in doubt, keep it simple. Something as straightforward as selecting a certain time of day — say, 7 p.m., after dinner, or 7 a.m., before breakfast — and writing for that hour no matter what else occurs is an excellent foundation for a writing habit.
The key to establishing a routine is keeping your goal realistic. Just like with a workout routine, when achieving a too-high goal gets too difficult, it can end up demoralizing you. Starting out with just 15 minutes a day dedicated entirely to writing can help jumpstart your habit. Once you’ve become comfortable holding to that routine, you can increase your allotted time as suits your needs. If you manage to cement your habit, you’ll find that problems such as writer’s block or procrastination melt away.
6. Set word count goals
Writing through a block is often a mental game. Feeling stuck on a certain part of the work can often lead to a cascade of negative emotions — imposter’s syndrome foremost among them. Helping your brain work through the negative emotions associated with a block is paramount when attempting to finish your manuscript. Sometimes what the mind needs is a sense of triumph and accomplishment; setting a word-count goal, and then achieving that goal, can go a long way towards providing you with that feeling.
As with establishing a routine, word-count goals require some forethought. Setting a high word-count — several thousand words a day — can often set up a writer for failure. And as with establishing a routine, setting modest goals you know you can reach is oftentimes more important than setting large goals that you think a writer should achieve per day. Graham Greene, famed author of The Quiet American and other works, wrote 500 words a day. That’s about one page, single-spaced. Even something as brief as 100 words a day can serve as a goal, so long as you reach it and feel satisfied with it.
7. Write backwards and forwards
Sometimes you might get stuck asking “what happens next?” You don’t necessarily need to write linearly. For example, in 1871, British Columbia was courted to join Canada as a full provincial member of the country. The deal clincher was the promise to connect B.C. with the rest of the country by building a transcontinental railway within ten years. Work commenced in both directions, heading east from Vancouver and west across the prairies and Rocky Mountains. The final spike was driven into the railway six years ahead of schedule in the town of Craigellachie, B.C., an epic achievement that wouldn’t have been possible without that both-directions approach.
You can use this same method to finish your book. Whether you’re writing a novel or a nonfiction book, working backwards from the end can be a game changing revelation. Suddenly, you’re no longer struggling to decide what comes next. You simply have to write whatever needs writing to connect to the ending. Eventually, just like building Canada’s transcontinental railway, you can work from both ends toward the meeting point somewhere in the middle. When you’re feeling stuck writing forwards, you can jump to whichever scene you left off writing backwards.
This tip requires that you know how the book ends, of course. But forcing yourself to make that decision can become the dynamite that breaks up your mental logjam and gets everything flowing. If you really love your ending, then writing to get there becomes urgent and exciting.
Another variation of this tip is to change your ending if you find what you originally drafted isn’t fitting. Thanks to word processing software, nothing is carved in stone until you reach the final draft of your book. You can even test out multiple endings and see which one produces the best results with readers. Do whatever moves you closer to launching your book on its path to publication.
Books are made of words, and lots of them. When it comes to finishing your manuscript, you need to crank out quantity first and then turn it into quality later. Book writing is not easy, but what a book can accomplish once it’s published is beyond most authors’ imaginations. Try thinking of your manuscript as a separate entity with a destiny of its own. You are a steward of that important fate. Someone out there really needs to read what you’re writing, so it’s depending on you to keep at it until you — and the manuscript — are finished.
Steve Donahue is a bestselling author, book coach, ghostwriter and speaker. His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and been translated into multiple foreign editions. Steve is the founder of Storyglu.com, a book coaching and ghostwriting firm that helps nonfiction authors write books readers can’t put down.
This post was co-written by Graham Wilcox, a Storyglu staff writer and book coach.
