How To Turn That Half-Written Manuscript Into A Finished Book
By: Jim Woods
Tags: Writer, Writers Block, Writers On Writing, Writing, Writers Life

You start writing your book with the best of intentions. And then momentum fades. You decide to take a break. Then your book sits there on your computer’s hard drive gathering dust.

You know you should finish it, but in your gut, you’re just wondering if you should start another book.

Sound familiar?

There is good news — you can absolutely finish your book. This short guide will help you move past procrastination and give you the momentum you need to finish your book.

When writing a book, it is helpful to remind yourself this fact: creativity is a very messy process.

“The creative act is primitive. Babies are born in blood and chaos. The most cultured mother gives birth sweating and dislocated and swearing like a sailor.” Steven Pressfield

The messiness is unavoidable — yet, somehow, we often go to great lengths to try to avoid this fact. It’s time to finally embrace the messiness of writing and accept it’s there.

The problem is that instead of sorting through the mess and spending time actually writing, it’s easy to do other things instead like…

1. Downloading a new app you don’t really need.

2. Spending hours unintentionally browsing online and then label it as “research.”

3. Talking about writing on social media.

4. Spending hours “working” in your email inbox.

5. Watching movies on Netflix for hours on end.

6. Listening to writing podcasts or watch interviews with our favorite author.

7. Jumping from one writing project to another (often to avoid doing the difficult work and to avoid finishing).

Completion of any of these tasks may even make you feel good. Some are even writing-related.

But, in many — if not most — cases, they are really procrastination.

If you want to be a cook, you can’t spend all of your time talking about recipes and finding inspiration on Pinterest. Eventually, you have to go into the kitchen and start cooking, right?

Step 1: Get all of your ingredients together and combine them together.

Step 2: Finish preparing the meal, and then cook it. Now, you have a meal.

Writing is no different.

There will be times when you screw up the recipe and make something that is not edible. That’s okay.

It happens to all of us from time to time. At least you finished the meal, right? Just keep making more messes. Keep creating.

A Simple Test For You

Scroll up to that list of seven items again. See one that stands out to you? Maybe even a couple? Or maybe you thought of something else.

That’s your dragon. You must confront your dragon because he is going to continue to stand in your way.

The Mighty Facebook Dragon Courtesy of PIxabay

You must be brave, even if you don’t feel brave at this moment.

When you face that dragon, you’ll need a sword. And when you write, you’ll find that sword. Instead of running from a challenge, you can face it. You can even defeat it.

The Number One Problem

For every writer — at every level — making and defending writing time is a lifelong battle. It’s not just that hard during the season of life you are in — it is always that hard.

“One must be pitiless about this matter of “mood.” I’ve forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my will as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes… and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

Joyce Carol Oates

Once you decide to set aside time for writing, you’ve got to be intentional about it.

When are you going to write? Put it on your calendar.

Block off the time and don’t let anything else get in the way. Get stubborn and get committed to showing up.

Next, you’ve got to attach some form of consequence to the act. If you could finish your book on your own, you’d already have done it by now, right? By consequence I mean show up and do the work you say you’re going to do or face some result. For some people, deadlines work well. I recommend having a coach or another writer check in with you via text. Why text? So you’ll actually read it and see it. Text messages have a way of cutting through the mix that emails do not.

Photo by Helena Lopez

You could also meet in person with another writer for coffee on a regular basis to hold each other accountable. There are many ways to get the support and encouragement you need to finish.

The Next Step

As you dive back into your book, you must answer an important question: where are you really at with your book right now?

It’s time to be 100% honest. Reread what you have written so far. It’s okay if you’re not happy with it or you think it is terrible. The good news is you can always edit it.

You can’t write and edit at the same time. If you do, you’ll only spin your wheels and stay stuck. Remember, no matter what you are writing you have to have a compelling beginning (act 1), an interesting middle (act 2) and a satisfying conclusion (act 3).

Spend some time with your book. Think about your book. You may only have one act. You may have all three acts, but act two might be boring and not hold the reader’s interest. Wherever you are, after you spend some time with your book you’ll have a better idea of where you need to focus your time.

Stay On Track With Your Book

Remember all books have a beginning, middle, and end. The confusion often lies when your mind jumps around. Your mind might move from the beginning to the end and then land back on the middle.

To map things out, jot down your ideas and put them into order.

This is the hardest part; if there isn’t a clear-cut beginning, middle and end, the book will likely need more work. Talk it over with a friend, and get feedback if possible. A second perspective can make a world of difference.

If you are working on the beginning of your book and know what you want to write about in that part, focusing on the final steps for the book launch will not help you. Multitasking is a myth and does not make you move any faster.

Resist the urge to skip ahead. Focus on the task at hand — today’s writing.

Keep in mind that it is common to fall off track while you write your book; make a plan to have others help keep you accountable and help you stay disciplined.

Set A Schedule

When you set a schedule, you give yourself a roadmap. Try your best to stick with it for the length of your book. You can tweak and change things next time. Right now, do whatever you can to stay disciplined and focus on finishing. Do remember that your self-control is finite.

Give yourself breaks, and establish boundaries to help you keep moving forward. As you establish good habits, they will become an essential part of developing your writing routine.

Measure Your Progress

Not all writing sessions will go as well as others; all you can do is put in the time and give your best effort.

Sometimes you will write a couple of thousand words. Other times you will write 200 words. This is absolutely normal. Accept this and know it is part of the journey in writing your book.

Some writers are just faster than others. Don’t worry about that as there is no real right or wrong way to do your work — the most important thing is that you do the work.

Say hello to your new best friend: data. I know data isn’t normally very exciting, but data will help you move past emotion. You’re going to have a few rough spots in finishing your book, and data will provide you with the powerful information you need to move forward and type ‘The End.’

Photo by Rawpixel

Many writers use word counts as a primary way of tracking your progress. However, there is an inherent danger in this; there will be times where you push yourself to meet a high word count for the day, and the writing is garbage.

There will be some days you write less but your writing will be fantastic. To have a more balanced approach, consider tracking your progress in hours and in words per day. Then you at least have two tools to measure progress.

Keep It Simple

Writing a book is hard enough, so leave yourself clear notes that you can follow. In my experience, post it note tabs on a manuscript can fall off — so if you decide to use those, it would be wise to reinforce them with tape. If you decide to leave yourself comments on the Word document, that’s fine too. The good thing about that approach is you can always save the document in several places.

Work on one chapter (or scene) at a time.

If you like to mark up pages with a pen instead of editing on a computer, you could print out one chapter at a time. This will also help you have more momentum as you edit and rewrite, because it is not as overwhelming holding a stack of 5 pages in your hand as it is looking at a 150-page manuscript. In addition, it is a lot easier to focus on one scene or chapter for writing.

Having a plan for both your writing process and editing process is essential.

In many cases, writers have a rough rough rough draft that is not finished. Here are a few tips that you can use to help you plan your writing process and also the editing process.

Commit to keeping writing and editing separate. For example, if you’re writing the book in Scrivener, edit in Word. When you keep each task separate, you’ll have more clarity. Remember, writing and editing are two very different tasks. Don’t let them blur together.

Writing is moving the sand into the sandbox.

Editing is using different tools to move the sand and making sand castles.

Writing is really messy by nature.

Editing is cleaning up the mess.

Finishing Requires Momentum.

As you keep writing, you’ll find momentum in many different ways. So once something works for you, keep doing it. Don’t change things up. Remind yourself of the success that you have already had.

Don’t believe the lie that once you have created the first draft, your work is finished. That is a lie. The creative process is messy. Your brain rarely works in order. The middle blurs together with the end. What you originally thought was the beginning could really be the middle.

Be willing to embrace the mess. Let your fear of creating something that is not perfect go. Sounds a little scary, right?

It is.

But you’ve finished your work before. When you think about it, you even have an approach that you’ve used in the past that you know works.

It’s a fact. You know how to do this. You’ve done difficult things before.

The most challenging stage in writing your book will be finishing. Perfectionism will often rear its ugly head and tell you the work is not good enough or something is missing. Common sense tells you the same thing as well. Eventually, you have to decide which voice in your head is fear-driven and which is telling you the truth.

Leonardo da Vinci famously said, “Art is never finished only abandoned.”

This also applies to the writing a book.

Finding any missing parts or plot holes is a valid concern, so rely on outside sources for their opinion to give you perspective. One thing you can do to reassure yourself is to create an outline or a mind map of the book as it currently is written.

Ask yourself these questions when looking at your manuscript to determine if you are finished:

· Is there a clear beginning, middle and end?

· Have you gotten feedback from beta readers and your editor?

· How do you feel about it?

· Are you proud of the work as is? (This is very important. If you are not proud of the piece, you will have a very hard time sharing and selling it.)

Ultimately, you — and you alone — must decide when your book is finished.

Shipping your work and publishing it is what will separate you from the millions of aspiring writers who never finished their manuscript.

You’ve come so far already; the time has come to finish.

No matter where you are today, please know you can finish your book. If you’d like some encouragement or help, just ask for it. You’re surrounded by more people that are cheering you on than you realize. Ask for some support, follow this plan, and you’ll soon be holding your finish book in your hands.