I always love seeing the finish line when I’m writing a story. At this point, I’ve been fleshing out the idea for some time, months, if not years. The idea will have hit me at some point and wouldn’t leave me alone, forcing me to think about it, explore it, and decide that there was an actual story there instead of something that just sounds a little interesting.
After this preliminary stage of exploration, I’ll have spent months outlining how the story would unfold, what kind of characters would participate in these events, how they got there, their motivations, until I’ve fleshed out enough of the story to start telling it. I never know everything when I start writing, and there’re always discoveries to be made as I start writing that first draft, but I’ll know enough about the world to get comfortable starting.
The way I approach writing leaves it so I’m never overwhelmed with what I want to write in one day, setting me up to reach my daily goals because I never have to write more than four pages. The tradeoff to that is that it does mean it may take me more time to compose the first draft. Dig Down, being on the shorter side, took me about forty days to write a first draft, but for most other books I’ve written, that first draft will take months to write. Add to that the time I’ve spent sculpting the idea in my head, and you’re looking at a massive investment of time just to complete a rough draft.
This may be a little discouraging to think about how much time it will take just to finish a first draft, which by no means will be perfect and still require a lot of work to mold it into the polished story you want to tell. But that’s the wrong perspective to take. If you’ve reached this point in the writing process, it’s something to celebrate. You’ve accomplished what a lot of people who want to write a book never have: you finished telling your story. It might be a little rough around the edges, but you stuck with it long after most others would’ve quit.
Writing is hard. Its victories are earned. That’s why whenever I complete a draft, I acknowledge the feat I’ve accomplished, and give myself a little vacation from it. Once I’ve completed a draft, I don’t pick it up and look at it for two weeks. It gives my mind a little reset from the idea I’ve been obsessed with for months now, and allows me to spot mistakes or areas to improve a little bit easier.
So if you find yourself running into a wall in your own writing, stop and think about how far you’ve come. Have you been at it for a while? Are there some personal victories of your own along the way? Acknowledge them. That positive reinforcement might be just what you need to finish.