Writing Advice Examined: Finish your book!

I’ve been a total writing podcast junkie for the last few weeks, and it amazes me how many times I hear veteran writers give the advice to finish your book.

This advice makes sense to me (and I’ve given it too) for several reasons, but hearing it over and over made me think about all the unfinished books floating around on my hard drive. Even as a multi-published author, I don’t finish every book I start. So today I want to dig into the reasons why authors so often tell new writers that they need to push through and finish their book, and also why maybe you shouldn’t.

Sticking with a story from beginning to end–even if you never go on to edit or publish it–is the best way to learn how to write a novel.  With every first draft I’ve completed, I’ve learned so much about what type of ideas excite me enough to make it through to the end, how many complications and twists are necessary to keep a story interesting, how do build a good character arc, and so much more. Craft books, blogs, and classes are great, but the absolute best way to learn how to write a novel is to actually write a novel.

You can’t sell an unfinished book. Lots of new writers get jazzed about ideas for their cover, looking for an agent, or writing the screenplay adaptation for their novel. But none of these great things can happen until you’ve finished the book. So that needs to be priority number one.

You’ve lost that loving feeling: (Cue the music.) Now, mature writers know that we don’t always have warm, fuzzy enthusiasm for our books. We do at first, of course. Same as a crush. But with time, that new-book-crush feeling fades and with it goes our energy and interest.

I scrolled through my archive of abandoned projects from the last few years and identified why I walked away from a few:

• Story #1: This idea was more about characters and the situation, but I never found a plot that I liked well enough to write more than a chapter or two. Maybe one of these days I’ll figure it out.
• Story #2: Working on this book bummed me out. My character was in a dark place, and I found myself getting annoyed with her because she wasn’t doing more to fix her situation. I gave up after about ten thousand words.
• Story #3: I was so excited about this book! I wrote three chapters, and then my enthusiasm faded until I forgot about it until just now.
• Story #4: This book sounded so fun to write, but I never could figure out where to start it and moved on to something else.

Sometimes, like with real love, when our book crushes fade, our feelings evolve into something deeper. That happened to me with The Lost Girl of Astor Street. While the book definitely felt like a struggle at times, it felt like a worthwhile one.

Right book, but wrong time: Now, one of these days, I may come back to the books on that list above. I may find a plot to work with my premise, or I may figure out how to write that story without getting bummed out and annoyed. There’s certainly no rule of, “Once you’ve abandoned a book, you can never come back.” For me, both Me, Just Different and The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet were books that I gave up on a few times before returning and finishing them.