How to Maintain Momentum and Finish Your Novel

There’s no two ways about it. Writing a novel is a long road, and maintaining momentum throughout the process can be one of the biggest challenges for any writer. Staying focused and pushing forward is essential. Here are some tips to help you keep going.

Set Clear Goals and Deadlines

Set clear, specific goals for your writing: a daily or weekly word count targets, chapter deadlines, or specific milestones in your story. Set a goal for how many words you want to write each day or week. Try committing to writing for just 10 minutes a day, or one afternoon a week, whatever works for you. Be realistic. Setting a deadline for finishing your novel can help create urgency and prevent procrastination. This deadline doesn’t need to be rigid, but having a timeframe helps structure your work and motivates you to keep going. The key is consistency. Keep seeing the book grow and move towards completion.

Develop A Clear Route

A full-length novel can feel like an overwhelming task. Break down the task into manageable chunks, for example, focusing on smaller tasks of writing individual chapters. Outlining your novel in advance can provide a clear route to completion, breaking the outline into specific scenes or chapters that you can tackle one at a time to a known schedule, planning a few weeks or months ahead. If you haven’t outlined, try writing a short summary of what needs to happen in the next scene, and focus only on that for the day. Make your writing process feel less like a huge task and more like a series of easier steps.

Track Your Progress

Don’t forget what you’ve achieved already. When you finish a chapter, or work through a particularly tough scene, take a moment to recognize your achievement. Track your progress visually. Mark off each day you write or each goal you meet. Find a way to do this: ticking off a list, or using a colour code in an Excel spreadsheet. Share your progress with a friend, fellow writer, or writing group. Having accountability partners can keep up the momentum.

Avoid Perfectionism

One of the biggest obstacles to finishing a novel is the desire to make everything perfect. Your novel, especially early on, doesn’t need to be perfect. Finish the draft, then edit, then revise: that’s all you need to do. Perfectionism is often talked of in admiring terms, but it is actually an anxiety issue and can lead to fear of failure. Embrace completing your novel, not your perfectionism. Progress is more important than perfection

Accept The Mess

Many authors find that the first draft is messy. This is normal. Allow yourself to write freely without too much worry during the drafting phase. Get the words down. And mistakes often turn out to be marvellous.

If you’re stuck on a particular scene or chapter, put a pin in what you are doing and move on to the next scene, even if it’s just to get more words down. You can always come back. Keep moving forward.

Keep Up Your Motivation

Take time to revisit your original motivation for writing the novel. What do you want from this? Be clear about your motivation and goal, without self-judgement. Do you just want to show off to your friends you have a novel out? That’s fine. Do you have a particular story you think the world needs to hear? Tell it. You are the one to do it. You have the right to be a success. If you work hard and create a good book, why shouldn’t you find success?

But Take Breaks

You won’t publish a novel if you collapse into burnout. If you’ve been writing consistently and find yourself feeling drained, accept that. Take a few days off, skip a week. But only one week. You are nurturing your creativity – so that you can grow it.

Don’t Fear The Editing

Learn to love editing – which yes, can be painstaking and frustrating – but is a core part of especially long-form writing. Understand that the first draft is just a draft. You might write it in a blur, or in fragments. Now is the time to focus and channel new energies into the final phase. But don’t worry too much about it. When drafting, view editing as a separate, later stage. When editing, focus on the end in sight, and the next exciting steps in your journey towards being a writer.

How To Write A Novel Chapter By Chapter available here: https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Novel-Chapter-Outlining-ebook/dp/B0DJ8TMVWL?ref_=ast_author_mpb

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