Let’s be brutally honest. Most writers do not finish their projects. According to some research I have found, a staggering 80% of adults want to write a book someday, but only 3% of those who try will actually finish it.

As evidenced by the fact that I now have three books and a novella available for purchase, I’m one of the 3%.

I want you to join me in that percentage. So what’s going wrong with your work? It has to do more with mindset than technical skill.

Please remember that I say this all with love. There’s nothing wrong with you if you face these problems; many people have dealt with this, and many of those people have overcome them. None of these issues are insurmountable, though some are more intractible than others.

So, let’s get into it. Here are some possibilities why you’re not finishing anything – as well as what you can do to fix it.

You’re too entranced with the idea of being a writer.

Something I read over on Reddit really struck me in the heart because it’s so true. A poster wrote: “Related to procrastinating, I had to seriously wrestle with whether I wanted to be a writer or just say I liked the idea of being a writer. I wonder if you took a pie chart of all people in writing communities, how big would that slice be. More than 1%, less than 25%?…. Less than 30%?….”

You will note, if you glance at writing subreddits and other communities, that there are a lot of people who have never published anything. Scroll through users, look how often they post on Reddit, and then look if they mention finishing any projects. The most prolific posters are also the ones with no titles to their name.

Why? Because they want to talk about writing more than they want to write. They want the mystique of being a writer, of talking endlessly about their projects, of people asking how their book is doing.

But the reality of writing is quite tedious, and a lot of people cannot handle the boring aspects. They do not enjoy the process of writing as much as they enjoy LARPing as a writer.

Unfortunately, the only way to fix this mindset is to just shut up and write. Stop posting on Reddit, stop talking about your projects, and do the thing.

You want the finished project without the work.

This mindset is at the center of the AI writing scourge. Many people do not want to spend years honing their craft before they are ready to publish because, again, the process doesn’t interest them. They want the end result, not the hours of pecking at the keyboard.

If you daydream about being a famous author, this might be you. Rather than thinking about how fun it is to delve into a new world and get to know your characters, you want the supposed social boost (which doesn’t exist, btw).

I don’t think about what would happen if I become famous because, frankly, I don’t care. Sales are great, but I’m not heartbroken if they don’t roll in. I love everything to do with writing, and even one or two people liking my work means I’m winning.

You must shatter your illusions about authorial success. Read some of my posts about the challenges authors face, such as rising illiteracy and predatory publishing houses. If you haven’t run screaming for the hills, realizing you’re likely to be out hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours before publishing, then it’s time to banish your excuses and get to work.

You are talking too much.

I see this most often in people who come from fanfiction, where nerding out about your special interest is totally acceptable. But this same thing can hurt you when you’re working on original fiction, which is a pretty solitary activity.

When you talk extensively about your work, you trick your brain into thinking you’re already done with it because you’ve spent so much time discussing it. This is the opposite of what we want when finishing our projects.

Of course, people may ask you about your work. But they typically only do this when you actually have something to show them. Otherwise, it is no different than yammering about your vacation: the other person wasn’t there, so they don’t care nearly as much about it as you do.

Only when you have something others can experience can you discuss it with them. If you want that emotional payoff, you have to actually finish. Stop discussing things while it’s in progress, and you’ll find you’re better able to focus because you want to share it.

You think you have to publish immediately.

If you have been following me for a while, you already know what I am going to say here, but I’ll say it again in case you haven’t heard.

You are not going to publish immediately. If you do publish immediately, it’s going to suck, and in a few years you’ll be very embarrassed.

I know this from experience. In my early twenties, I published a book of Sherlock Holmes novellas, and it was so shitty that I never sold a single copy. In fact, the book later got taken down from every publishing site because of supposed copyright violations (probably because of the BBC Sherlock influence). Which is a relief, because I don’t want my name associated with it.

But so many people think their very first project has to be publisher-ready. They agonize over every word, thinking of comp titles and blurbs and agents. That pressure suffocates them, and they become so intimidated that they don’t work on it anymore.

Please do not think you will publish your first project. You won’t. It will be thrown into the query maelstrom or the Amazon listings, and you’ll be devastated by the lack of interest.

If you have a special book idea that you really want published, don’t work on it. Leave it alone, or write little notes about it as you continue to practice. Or, you could write it and leave it in your drafts until you’ve done a million other words.

Remember that you are practicing, just like a musician will prepare for Carnegie Hall by studying music theory and learning their bars. Success takes time.

Personally, I believe you should start with smaller projects, expanding your scope as you improve.

Write a poem. Write another poem. Then write flash fiction. Then short stories. Then novellas, and so on. Over time, you’ll build up your writing muscles and be ready to publish.

You are not disciplined.

Unproductive writers do not have the discipline necessary to finish anything. They do not set deadlines, don’t give themselves word count goals, don’t form a plan and execute it step by step. Instead, they do whatever they feel like whenever they feel like it, never holding themselves accountable.

You can’t do this if you want to succeed. You have to develop discipline, day after day.

Many assume that when I talk about discipline, I’m saying you need to sit down and write for eight hours every single day. Nope. That will cause you to burn out and get resentful. Rather, you set a schedule that works for you, create a timeline for when to get things done, and stick to it.

You are working on too many things at once.

I have railed about having more than one WIP dozens of times, but people continue to do this. So I’ll keep saying it: stop that.

Stop working on five things at once. Each time you jump in between projects, you lose momentum on all of them because you’re constantly switching contexts, which taxes your brain and makes it hard to focus on anything.

Yes, I understand that you become excited about a project and want to work on it right away. But like people with executive dysfunction fail to complete tasks because they can’t stop jumping from thing to thing, so will you when you work on a million things at once.

If you think of a story idea for another project, write it down, then turn your attention back to your current WIP. I often journal about the next parts of the Eirenic Verses when I’m busy with one project, then go back to review those notes when I’ve completed my WIP and moved on to the next one. This way, there’s very little downtime between projects because I have already primed my brain to focus.

Building a process is crucial to finishing your work. When you have a sequence to a project, then your brain knows what to do next, and you can seamlessly move from one step to the next.

Otherwise, you have a chaotic mess. You’re writing a paragraph, then revising it, then going to the next paragraph, then revising again.

This is inefficient because the parts of the brain involved in creative synthesis – the active writing – are not the same parts involved in revision. They are two separate tasks. Trying to do them all at once is, again, context switching.

I have provided a road map to my own writing process that you can copy. This process is tremendously successful because it breaks everything down into separate sequences that flow into each other. I move from the logistical part, to the creative part, to the revision part, to the marketing part.

All of these require different types of cognition, and so doing them separately allows me to activate different parts of my brain as necessary.

Of course, you don’t have to follow my format. Maybe it’s too rigid for you, or maybe it includes steps that are irrelevant to your project. That’s okay. All that really matters is that you set up a process that works for you, no matter how that might look to others.

Get organized, even if it’s just a simple sketch of what you want to do. Set up the sequence, put things in order by scene, and work on things as they come to you.

You are too rigid about your process.

On the other hand, we have people who suffer incessant writer’s block because they’re convinced they have to do everything in order. If they don’t have a scene envisioned, the entire project stops until they’ve puzzled it out. The longer that it takes to figure out that scene, the more demoralized they get until they don’t want to do anything at all.

My process sped up exponentially when I decided to work on a project out of order, as things arose. Many times, I found that once I’d done a later part of the story, the rest pulled together because I had something to work toward. I wanted that scene to fit in, so I moved toward it piece by piece.

As an example, the confrontation between Orrinir Relickim and his estranged father in Funeral of Hopes was one of the very first parts I completed. Then, I went back and explained how it got to that point.

I already knew I wanted Uileac Korviridi to be the “family first” person, as that was one of the primary conflicts, but I also wanted him to be Orrinir’s protector in that fragile moment. As such, I needed to figure out how he experienced this transformation: what essential moments changed his perspective. This then spawned some of the most impactful moments in the book, like Orrinir taking care of an injured child.

You don’t think you can do it.

Lastly, a lot of procrastination and refusal to work is self-sabotage. You don’t think you can be a writer, so you subconsciously make that happen by not doing anything.

Writing is a purely cognitive process except for tapping at the keys, and even that can be substituted for voice-to-text or a transcription service. As such, any gunk floating around your brain gets in the way of what you want to do.

If you spend a lot of time admiring your favorite authors and comparing your work to theirs, you’ll get discouraged. Stop idolizing writers or imagining they have some secret you’re not aware of.

There is no secret to writing.

None. Everything you need to know is publicly available. You just have to apply it.

Anyone can become a writer if they work hard and learn about the craft. It’s not like becoming an athlete, where you may genuinely need to have a certain bone structure or have started early enough that your body adapted to these stresses.

Yes, it takes years to become a good writer. If you really want to do it, knowing that fact will not discourage you. Instead, you’ll see this period as a time to play, explore, and learn without pressure.

Authors are not magical beings who mindlessly type out a masterpiece. Producing a great piece of fiction takes experimentation, persistence, and patience. My first drafts from years ago are so cringe I can’t even look at them, but now I sink into my own stories like old friends.

You can get there too. I promise. Keep working. Don’t get discouraged. Remember that everyone you admire has been in your place, and they fought these same demons.

Take these words to heart: you can be a writer if you keep writing. I want you to succeed, and I believe in you.