Obsessively rewriting the first chapter or two of my book was one of the first hurdles I had to get over as a new writer.

Story beginnings felt easy and fun to me. I would write my first few chapters, or my first few scenes, and excitedly pass them out to my friends. They would offer some feedback, and while incorporating their suggestions, I often found myself completely rewriting the scenes. Then, instead of carrying on with drafting the rest of the story, I would reconsider my first chapter or two, decide to change the tense or the POV character, and rewrite again. I told myself that once I made these opening chapters “perfect” I would be unlocked to write the rest of the book.

If you also have obsessive rewriting tendencies, this scenario probably sounds familiar to you! Like me as a new writer, you might have a folder or a notebook full of early chapters and not much else.

I knew this was a problem I needed to solve. Someday I wanted to be published, and I had zero chance of achieving that if I couldn’t write an entire novel. When I talk to writers who are struggling with obsessive rewrites, this is often the reason they cite. They want to finish a book and they know that rewriting early chapters isn’t going to get them there.

Another reason why obsessive rewriting is unhelpful is that it stunts your growth. I was doing the same part of the process over and over. It’s like if all you ever did was create characters, but you never put them in stories. Maybe you created great characters … or maybe you didn’t. There’s no way to know if you don’t put them in stories and see how they work.

I had no idea if my beginnings were good, because I never found out what the rest of the story was. That’s the only way to know if a beginning works.

Writing the beginning of a new idea is almost always going to sound more delightful to me than getting through the middle of my current idea. While I’m not one of those writers who thinks you need to finish every book you start, I do think it’s valuable to learn when you’re allowing yourself to be distracted from your current idea just because writing the story feels hard.

So, how do you do this? How do you train yourself to not obsessively rewrite?

For many writers (including me) the answer is that you teach yourself to be comfortable with writing a bad first draft.

The strategy of writing bad first drafts, popularized by Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, was what what finally got me through. I’m not a perfectionist in all things, but I definitely have some perfectionistic tendencies with writing. (You too? Read Perfectionism and Writing: How To Embrace “Good Enough” So You Can Actually Get Stuff Done.)

For me, accepting that messy, chaotic first drafts were a part of the creating process was a turning point in my writing. When I stopped allowing myself to go back and edit the heck out of chapter one, I started actually finishing manuscripts. They were terrible. Some of them I never even bothered to edit. But through writing an entire story, not just a beginning, I learned more about what made a book work. I learned about what kind of story idea could sustain an entire novel, what kind of characters I needed to fill out a world, what held my interest for 75,000 words, and what bored me.

Gradually, I came to understand that my first draft was never going to be perfect, whether I took one month to write it or one year. Learning to give myself the gift of an entire first draft to work with, instead of obsessing over making the first half of the book perfect, was well worth the effort.

But it did take effort to learn how to shush the part of my brain that was itching to fix things in chapter one. Here are some ideas for training yourself how to get through an entire first draft:

Try to write further than you have before.

If you’ve only ever made it through chapter one or two of your manuscript, try to get to chapter three or four before allowing yourself to go back and make revisions.

Once you can do that, try to make it a few more chapters before you go back and revise.

At this point in my career, I have somewhat scheduled times where, instead of plowing through the whole draft, I pause to reread. Soon after my midpoint twist, I frequently read back through everything I’ve written, largely so I can gather up all the threads of the story I’ve started and be sure to tie them up in the second half. When I do this, I might make a few changes to the first half of the book before I write the second half, but I’m never doing massive rewrites to those early scenes.

If you haven’t been writing long enough to identify things like your midpoint twist, don’t panic. The more you write and the more you understand about story structure, the better you’ll become at identifying where you are in the story.

Leave notes for yourself about what you know needs fixing.

I’ve found this to be an incredibly useful tool for hushing the part of my brain that knows I need to do more research, or that I’m not describing enough, or that this plot twist is weak.

When that happens, I’ll just make a note right there in my document: “Add more details about what characters are doing in this scene. Right now this conversation reads like they’re in front of a green screen.” Just acknowledging that something needs fixing is often enough to quiet my inner editor and let me peacefully move on with writing the rest of the story.

Have a plan for what you’re writing next.

I hardly ever finish a writing session without leaving myself notes about what I think happens next. Anytime I skip this step, I’m reminded the next day why I rarely let myself do that!

A lot of my early tendencies to rewrite were really about me not knowing what should happen next in the story. It felt easier to fuss with what I’d already written than it did to figure out what could happen next in the book. Leaving yourself a few notes can go a long way toward forward progress!

Have someone hold you accountable.

The first time I finished a full manuscript and decided to wait Stephen King’s suggested six weeks before I started editing, I felt super antsy to get back to my story.

I decided to read some comp titles while I waited for the big day, and one was This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen, the voiciest YA novel I’d ever read. Even though it had only been a week or two of my six week waiting period, I got out my manuscript to start revisions.

I was instantly depressed. My characters didn’t leap off the page the ways hers did. My writing was choppy and disjointed. I was never going to be published!

When I told my best friend about this, she said, “Wait … I thought you were waiting six weeks before you edited.”

I said, “Yeah…”

“What are you doing, Stephanie?” she said. “Put the manuscript away. Wait your full six weeks.”

She held me accountable, reminded me of what I had said I was going to do, and I was grateful. I put the book away.

If there are people in your life who you can tell, “I’m trying to write my entire manuscript before I do any rewriting, ” do yourself a favor and tell them! Ask them to ask you about it. Anytime we’re training ourselves on a new skill–and learning how to write a full manuscript is a hard skill to master–having people check in on us is a good way to keep ourselves on track.

Do you struggle with chronic rewriting? If not, do you have another writing hurdle you’re trying to get over?

Stephanie Morrill writes books about girls who are on an adventure to discover their unique place in the world. She is the author of several contemporary young adult series, as well as two historical young adult novels, The Lost Girl of Astor Street and Within These Lines. Within These Lines was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, as well as a YALSA 2020 Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Since 2010, Stephanie has been encouraging the next generation of writers at her website, GoTeenWriters.com, which has been on the Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers list since 2017. She lives in the Kansas City area, where she loves plotting big and small adventures to enjoy with her husband and three children. You can connect with Stephanie and learn more about her books at StephanieMorrill.com, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.