Keeping the Pace: Making sure you finish the story

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! It’s so nice of you to stop in! I sincerely hope that you’ve all enjoyed our series this month, as we’ve discussed first drafts from the point of view of the new writer. I’ve personally learned a few things along the way, and reminded myself of some things that I really need to keep in mind while I’m getting deeper into my latest work-in-progress.

But today, we have one final topic to discuss, one last thing that I find incredibly important for every writer, whether you’re established or not. Why? Because somehow, we all struggle with this, from time to time.

Keeping the Pace: Making sure you finish the story

There’s something about keeping the pace, while you’re writing, that sometimes makes the process drag on. There’s something about writing at a consistent pace, writing daily or every other day or whatever your schedule might be, and writing at a constant clip, that just… well, it tends to make us all slow down and just want to stop, sometimes.

You know what? That’s okay.

There’s nothing wrong with having times when you really don’t want to write. There’s no problem with taking a day, a week, even a month off if you’ve burned yourself out. It happens to the best of us. Even the greatest novelists in the world have occasionally burned themselves out and needed a break (even if they’re too proud to admit it).

But, it’s (slightly) important that we make sure that doesn’t happen while we’re in the middle of writing our novel. At least, we need to make sure it doesn’t happen to so great an extent that we don’t know what to do with our book when we finally get back to it.

For me, it’s hard to take more than a week off from my book at a time. Yeah, I can take almost a whole week. For some of you, that’ll seem like an insane amount of time. For others, that’ll seem incredibly short. We all have our own processes, after all—and there’s nothing wrong with it. But, it’s also important that we know our limit. You need to know how much time you can take off, how much time your brain will let you take apart from your book, without losing the story completely.

So, I have a few pieces of advice for you, when it comes to keeping the pace. Call it sage, if you will. Just some things I’ve learned along the way, that I’d like to pass to all of you.

• However much you can write today, is enough for today.
• The same goes for tomorrow, and the day after.
• Don’t think of your book as a word count—trust me, it’ll just get too stressful.
• If it helps you to have word goals for a day, use them. If it doesn’t, don’t. If that changes from day to day, you do you. 
• If it helps, give yourself a deadline. If it doesn't, try estimating one. 
• Have someone you’re accountable to, for how much you’ve written and how your story is going. Tell them everything they’ll let you tell them (bonus points if you can find someone who doesn't mind you spoiling the book for them). Use them for advice on your plot, if you need help along the way.
• Find your tune. By which I mean, find what music inspires you most, and play it on repeat while you’re writing. When it gets old, change it. But that’ll take a while.
• When you do reach the end, celebrate! Seriously. Go out. Get some champagne. Do something fun that you couldn’t do while you were trying to reach your deadline (assuming you had one).
• Most importantly: give yourself some time off. Let your brain breathe. Do something else creative, if you like.

That’s my advice, however simple it may be. I think those are things we all need to hear, time and time again.

I hope I’ve been some help to you, over this month’s series! I still haven’t decided what we’ll be discussing for the month of June, but I can promise you that it’ll be fun! ;-)

[love]

{Rani Divine}