Writing a book can bring out a plethora of emotions.
One day, you are completely infatuated with your book. Every word you write is golden. Your characters are immaculate. Your plot virtually oozes with chocolate ganache.
Other days, it’s like lead. The words feel heavy, the characters stiff. You flat out hate it. You consider scrapping the whole thing and just watching sitcoms in your spare time. Eating Doritos. Wearing pajama pants. Crying. I’m so sorry.
But, rest assured, we have all been there. Even with my books firmly self-published and in the hands of readers, I debate about deleting them from Amazon. Are they good enough? Who knows? How can we ever TRULY know if what we write is good enough. I bet the greats wonder themselves.
But you know what? Even though we doubt ourselves, we still finish our books. When we most want to throw them to the cyber wolves, we plough through. Why? Because finishing the book gets us to an end point. If you don’t have anything to work on, then how can you work on anything?
It’s like expecting a sculptor to stare at a piece of marble fresh from the quarry and say, “This will never amount to anything,” before he’s chipped anything away.
Complete is sometimes better than perfect.
As a recovering perfectionist (I know there are many of you out there, and I can’t recall who uses that phrase so I can credit her.), this is a tough pill for me to swallow.
Before I had children (I barely remember it), I had a neat, dust-free house, clean clothes, no dishes in the sink, empty counters, and a grocery list with items I was nearly—not OMG we’re out!—out of. In the vague, quiet times before I listened to two small children fighting over one princess figurine in a bucket of fifty, I lived for perfection. I panicked when things weren’t neat. I had to have all my projects finished early, crisp and clean.
Now that I’m just happy to have enough clear floor space to walk without tripping, I’ve scaled back a bit. And that includes how I write my books.
Especially on those days when you hate every peck of the keyboard on your journey to the end of the book, I know that you just want to be done. So do it.
Tell the story. Get to the end. Wrap it up.
Then put it aside, breathe a sigh of relief, and have a glass of wine.
It may not be pretty, but you have a completed piece to work with now. You can examine it and pick it apart. You can preen and polish.
How do you know if you’re struggling with trying to write a perfect narrative instead of just getting the story out and cleaning it later?
- You pause when you are searching for the right word.
I don’t mean thinking for a moment and continuing with the narrative. I mean dwelling on it. If you let one little word interrupt your writing time, whether it’s because you want the word with the exact right shade of meaning or it’s because you need to name a character, city, etc., you have cut off whatever your brain was working on for the story. Shifting directions in the middle of your work is counter-productive.
Instead of searching for that perfect word when you’re in the middle of your writing, set aside a time to do all your research, preferably at the beginning of a writing session so you aren’t interrupting your thoughts. Just insert a word or several underscores and highlight them so you know where to input the word when you find it.
2. You go back through the book and edit instead of using your writing time to finish your story.
As an editor, I’ve been guilty of this one a lot. I sit down to write and end up picking apart the first two or three chapters. The next thing I know, I’ve run out of time and have to leave the new ideas I was playing with locked in my head. Ouch!
If you like to go back and read what you already wrote to get you in the mood to write the book, be sure that you don’t turn on your editor, or you could find yourself more concerned with your phrasing than with getting your story out.
3. When you’re story is flowing well, you stop to do research instead of maintaining that flow.
Yeah, I used to do that a lot.
I can’t tell you how many writing sessions I have killed by researching what ancient cultures believed gemstones could do or the folklore surrounding a certain mythical creature or other such fascinating information.
The internet is full of rabbit holes. If you need to check something while you’re writing, make it brief. Once your writing time is done or your brain has slowed down in splashing brilliance on the page, refuel by researching.
Little distractions play a big part in keeping us from finishing our work, so just remember to focus, set aside time to do your research, and above all, complete your book.