Finishing Your Novel

I’m nearing the end of my current project, and I can feel myself slowing down; as the end draws nearer, my daily word count decreases, and I spend more time reading, researching, and plotting. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, considering the fact that I was unsure of exactly how the story would end until about three days ago. Now that I’m 45,000 words in, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m finishing this, though I’m exactly sure how.

First tip: don’t be afraid to pause and think. I don’t mean set aside your work completely, but take a break. One day without writing will not kill you. (If you think it might, consider working on something else.) Just recently I spent most of the day thinking about where my story was going. I wrote lots of dead-end scenarios, did lots of research, and read some of the endings of my favorite books. By the end of the day, I had an idea of what would work and what wouldn’t.

The second and possibly most important tip is to stop thinking you have to write everything in order. You don’t. In fact, you will probably be better off (and so will your manuscript) if you stop forcing yourself to write the hard parts and skip to something you’re excited to work on. If you’re like me, these skips can be a little hard to keep track of, so I have a running list of chapters I need to go back and finish. Right now it’s a list of about fifteen chapters, and he notes vary from “needs something” to “not written, but outlined.” When I get tired of whatever I’m working on, I know I have a list of places I can go back and work on. When I finish a chapter, I cross it off the list.

My last advice is a bit of motivation: You can do it! Try to recreate the enthusiasm you had when you first started your novel. You should be even more excited than you were then because you’ve done the hard part! You’re almost finished! (except then you have to edit, but that’s a topic for later)