I have this terrible artist habit: not finishing projects. This includes novels, books, and so much more. Do you want to finish your novel? Do you?
It is beyond frustrating to look around my room and see unfinished projects hanging around. They fill up boxes; they weigh on you and nag at the back of your mind. I have been abandoning stories all my life, leaving plots unwritten, characters stranded, art half drawn.
This needs to change.
So, I decided to fix it. This is the beginning, I’ll show you how I’m going to do it, so you can finish your novel too. I call it the unfinished projects project.
It began first as a New Year’s resolution and ballooned into a strange yet fascinating undertaking.
I started by asking myself. When is it okay to drop a writing project and when do you need to buckle in and get them done? Some of them should not be finished. They are the ones I cringe when I read. The ones with untenable concepts and gigantic story holes. These ones I will leave behind (or bury in a dark closet or send to the recycling bin.) (Like some of my fan fiction, but if I still had the Sailor Moon ones I’d share them because they were parodies and so badly written they were hilarious.) I’m learning it has a lot to do with my feelings about the project. If I like a story or the character they stick with me. They haunt me.
Over the years, I’ve left behind drafts and partial outlines with missing middles and no endings. I reread a few chapters and enjoy it so much, I think, why didn’t I finish this? I want to know more. So, I pick them up again. Like pieces of an unfinished puzzle.
Are you Haunted by Unfinished Manuscripts?
Before I decided to tackle my unfinished projects I was committed to a process I call Pro-crastination. Crastination isn’t such a big deal but notice the pro part. I am a professional, after all. Procrastinating is a highly developed skill, where you waste time doing other things, and avoid your writing until the guilt gets to you and you spiral into a writer’s/artist block. Misery becomes your faithful friend. My nemesis has arrived to sabotage me.
The Artist Saboteur
Joking aside, there is a point here in recognizing the way you sabotage yourself. It’s a key step in understanding why you can’t write, which is tied directly to why I can’t finish projects. I learned about my saboteur from The Artist Way by Julia Cameron.
Hello, Artist on the Artist’s Way
Last year I spent twelve weeks following the book and posted once per week here about my adventures along the Artist’s Way (not an actual road or path, but a way of living.) It’s fascinating how the experience helped me to survive a hospital visit that occurred at the very end of my 12 weeks. It was a poetic and epic conclusion to my journey.
The book gave me skills to become more fulfilled and helped me connect with my artist self. She is like the inner child, the one who throws tantrums and gets hurt easily by criticism. She demands and sulks, and in turn, I learned to nurture her with kindness.
We are at our best when we have fun playing with our art, whether that is being messy with pastels or making opera puppets, or writing stories about sisters who swap lives. We work together to create art and stories. She is me but at my best, and yes, it’s weird to talk about her as a separate person, but it also helps.
While I have my artist self, there is also a saboteur inside me.
There is a concept in the Artist’s Way about artists loving to be miserable, that they prefer complaining about their inability to do any writing/drawing/creating because being miserable is safer than creating something.
I’ve started to recognize it in myself. It begins when I’m overwhelmed with work or have put pressure on myself to write 1667 words a day for three months. Instead, I don’t write any words. After all, if I never finish a story, I never have to show it, publish it, or deal with reviews.
How the artist saboteur works
It was painful to realize how I hurt myself with self-sabotage.
Negative thoughts build up. I start thinking I’m not good enough, and my writing is not good at all. I’m mean and start guilt-shaming myself. In my own head, I’m hurting, but I allow it because some small, bitter part of me feels I deserve it.
This is how the artist saboteur works to ruin you and convince you to give up.
Do you ever tell someone about a new project, new habit or planned a new routine you’re trying, and think that this will hold you accountable, but you don’t tell the other person you want to be held accountable? It’s easier this way. You’re leaving the hatch unlocked, an escape pod is still ready and you can abort mission at the first sign of failure. These are excuses to stop being creative, to give up, and be happier as a blocked and miserable artist.
But it doesn’t have to be like this.
How to keep your momentum to finish your novel
1 Start a routine (even if it’s just two minutes a day.)
This is how the 2-minute routine works. You try a routine for something for two minutes every day. Because two minutes is nothing. This is the beginning. When a routine is so ingrained into you, it becomes a habit. You can find videos about the 2-minute habit (here’s the one that caught my attention) and articles that explain more about the difference between routine and habits, like this one.)
But, what actually worked best for me was morning pages, which are used in the Artist’s Way. On week one I committed to morning pages. I set my alarm 30 mins earlier and I got up and did my stretches and then journaled. I complained a lot about the morning pages at first.
2 Affirmations.
Use these to stop those negative, self-sabotaging thoughts. They reword, rewire, and rework your brain. They teach you and change you in miraculous ways.
3 Rest days.
Seriously, I need these, you need these and I’m learning not to feel guilty about taking them. Use them to recover, and acknowledge your hurts. Learn about yourself and what you need to feel successful and to become successful. I make lists. Lists help me break down a big, overwhelming project into a small task I can do right now. Take ten minutes of writing at lunchtime. (Like what I’m doing right now while working on this blog post.)
Haruki Murakami says writing a novel is like running a marathon. Think about that. You don’t just show up one day to run. There is training. You practice with smaller runs. You build up your strength and endurance and the mindset to push through the exhaustion, the lungs ragged for breath, and a painful kink in your side and you keep running for miles and miles. Or in our case, writing and writing to finish your novel. For a book with more poetic musings, try reading Haruki Murakami’s, What I mean when I talk about Running.
4 Move your desk!
Rearrange the furniture and declutter your mind and your stuff at the same time. Have you heard of Fung Shui? There is a lighter version of it that focuses on the arrangement of furniture. The goal is to create a space with good energy. Does your bedroom feel secure and safe? Do you have a desk where you are productive. There is a concept of the command position.
Where is your desk? Does it face the wall? Consider turning it around so you can see the room and maybe a window. (Which is important to me.) I rely on intuition to write, so of course this rearranging is what I needed. My room had the bed in the wrong place and I would go there to relax, instead of my desk, because the desk and chair were not inviting.
Watch these videos for more brilliance on feng shui tips and tricks from dear modern. ( Or this one is a short. His expression cracks me up!)
5 Have fun.
Teach yourself how to have fun with writing projects. This is mindset, trick yourself by playing a game. Learn by doing what you love. Do you love the novel? Like it? Remember that early excitement when you started writing can help you finish your novel.
Because when a project is fun you’ll want to work on it. But remember, there is a difference between fulfilling fun and just amusement. Writing is fulfilling. Even if it involves a lot of work and there are parts I dread. (Like the next chapter, which has the following revision notes… fix everything…. Gah! Seriously, who wrote that? Me. I did. Guilty.) I find grammar and copyeidts are a chore. but I put on some fast-paced music and get on with it. (Listening to the video game soundtracks I love, or electro jazz, my new love.)
My Unfinished Projects
Luckily, I’m not just tackling unfinished writing, but unfinished projects. I’m going to change my habits. That means everything!
Games I want to finish but haven’t yet. (FF7 the original and Death Stranding)
Books I have on my shelf, the ones you can read anytime, but never do. I’m finishing them. (like Jim Butcher’s Battleground and the History of Cologne.)
Art projects (like my portfolio and the Digital art and Character Art lessons I bought on Udemy but have not finished. Why? Why would you buy lessons and not finish them?)
Writing. So many half-written stories. I’m in the messy middle of revisions to the final book of the Fairy Doctor series. It’s taken wild and unexpected turns and expanded in scope. So it is taking a while to finish. But I will finish it. (This is one of the reasons I started publishing a Kindle Vella story called The Thorn Path. I started this story as a NANOWRIMO novel and never finished it. Now I’m going to. *update, it’s no longer on Vella because I finished it and I’m going to release it as a novel someday! More on this project later!)
Another success has been the release of a free ebook on my website. This was unfinished story I finally got around to revising (until it was good enough. It could always be better. I could have taken years more polishing this little gem because I was not on a deadline.)
The challenge is real and it’s time to get to work.
I plan to celebrate each little success (Xenoblade 3 DONE. The ending hit harder than I was expecting. Hammerfall by CJ Cheryl after five years, READ.) Eventually, I will have finished my list of projects.
The goal is to build a new habit of not leaving things unfinished. So, even small mending or crocheting projects are included. The tricky part is what to do about new projects. Well, I am not restricting myself, saying I cannot start anything new until I finish the old, but the same rules apply: Finish the project!! (Why is this allowed? Because Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom came out. I beat it, but I am still playing it and plan to find all the shrines and finish all the sidequests, eventually.)
Are you trying to finish your novel? Let me know about it!
Did I mention I’m hoping you’ll hold me accountable in the comments? Oh, I didn’t? Well. Phew. Then if we never mention this again… I can pretend this never even happened.
* update: about those unfinished novels of mine. I have a report coming soon!