The Drive to Finish
It took me seven years to finish my first book. (I wrote about this in The War of Art.)
I couldn’t sell it. Couldn’t find a buyer. In fact, it would be twenty-one more years before a novel of mine actually saw the light of publication.
But finishing that first manuscript meant everything.
We talked in an earlier chapter about Resistance being the strongest at the finish line. It is. Resistance knows we’re about to defeat it. It summons all its genius and all its power to stop us.
How do we break through?
There’s a legend about Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, many more) that as he got close to the end on a novel, he would start getting up earlier and earlier to work on it. First it was six o’clock, then five, then four. Finally, he’d have to move out of the house, check into a hotel, just to keep from driving his wife crazy.
Michael Crichton was smart. He knew that as he approached the finish line, his inner Resistance would ramp up its intensity, trying to keep him from reaching THE END.
So Michael Crichton upped his own intensity.
Finish it. Don’t chicken out! FINISH THE DAMN THING!
That was how it worked for me in that first book, the one I could never sell, but that changed everything for me. And here’s the even better news, which I pass on to all of us struggling to get a make-or-break project across the finish line:
Once you finish—even one time, even on a project that ultimately fails—you will never have trouble finishing again.
DO THE WORK
Steve shows you the predictable Resistance points that every writer hits in a work-in-progress and then shows you how to deal with each one of these sticking points. This book shows you how to keep going with your work.
THE AUTHENTIC SWING
A short book about the writing of a first novel: for Steve, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Having failed with three earlier attempts at novels, here's how Steve finally succeeded.
NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T
Steve shares his "lessons learned" from the trenches of the five different writing careers—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. This is tradecraft. An MFA in Writing in 197 pages.
TURNING PRO
Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have pro habits. When we turn pro, we give up the comfortable life but we find our power. Steve answers the question, "How do we overcome Resistance?"
Absolutely love this. It’s so very true. You must summon it all and finish.
Artists can’t be quitters. Imagine the world if we did. Thanks, Steve.
wow, I like the way you said it!
Thank You and Thank you Steve
Eu costumo curtir o que escrevo até a penúltima frase,ou última página. Fico gostando de namorar a quase realização, ainda que com uma boa dose de masoquismo, precisando da realização encerrada. Aí repentinamente, como num ataque no tempo limite do contratado, mergulho e finalizo. Estranhíssimo isso. Já levei para a terapia e nada. As suas quartas feiras de escrita estão me ajudando muito.
Obrigado amigo.
FB
Thank you.
Yes. Wow. Yeah. Oy. Doh.
Still.
Almost done.
This helped.
Thanks.
With me, finishing is the most exciting part. The worst part is finding an agent to help you get published.
Russel,
This part is also where I meet the most resistance. And where I’m at now. We won’t quit. I need you to believe this so I can, too.
Okay now I know whats going on!
Thanks
Inspiring.
bsn
15 minutes a day … that’s how I finished my screenplay … once I got in the daily habit sometimes that 15 turned into 90 minutes … every day was different but always 15 minutes for sure
That’s how I’ve made progress on almost anything, Mitch. I promise to do X, daily, at a rate so seemingly small there isn’t anything to object to 🙂
I just started playing the guitar again, I quit last year. 90% of people to take up the guitar quit. I love this post every week about the demon of all demons the big R mother fu…….
Thank you Steve,
Bing Wilson
Amen. Completion helps defeat the resistance next time
I am with you 99% of the time, but I am hitting a different wall. Wrote 4 in 4 years. All just flew with small breaks in between. # 5 had died at about 40 pages. 5 months of guilt and knowing my characters are wondering where in the hell I went. It is a historical prequel to my trilogy and sequel of 1 to 4. Topic is Grandfather’s life that began as a young man and 2nd gen German Danish immigrant, who joined the USMC at Navy Pier. Fought and was decorated at Belleau Wood. So though it is fiction with a strong historical background and recall, it has come to a grinding halt.
Resistance? Always is, but a different form of the beast that tried to take me down during 1 to 4.
Thank you dear Steve.
Ah, The Art of Finishing. That would make a great book.
I lost all incentive the last 2-3 years, I don’t know ecactly how. It was all gone. I was at the third and last part of the book. But I would stay there. No, not writing the book – I couldn’t do that, I was blocked. But in the manner of believing, only believing, without facts in my discipline to support it -I would write many things, I would read many things, but I wouldn’t write a word for the book-, that I would end that book.
Now I see my artist legs moving toward the goal. I have also done something by chance in the midst of these non-moving-forward years: one day I wrote the… ending of the story. Yes I did, and I perfected it also. It is poetic. BUT I didn’t write “THE END” because I knew I hadn’t built the bridge between where I truly was and that end.
Was my “Finishing-Red-Button-Resistance” those 2-3 years? It is so invisible, so difficult to be sure about that.
I wish you happy birthday for the coming birthday. It was a fortunate day for us, it was.
I am writing.
My love to you, DIana, the friends, the team.
P.s. correction on the “I lost all incentive” paragraph: I wasn’t believing when not writing those years. I was something else: attached to the end result, stressed about that, and not knowing what to do about it. But the attachment was for some reason unmovable. Not in the sense of glorious unmovability. More like a complete absence of thinking of the opposite possibility – not ending it. So only one way was open always, I just couldn’t walk on it at all.
Eu costumo curtir o que escrevo até a penúltima frase,ou última página. Fico gostando de namorar a quase realização, ainda que com uma boa dose de masoquismo, precisando da realização encerrada. Aí repentinamente, como num ataque no tempo limite do contratado, mergulho e finalizo. Estranhíssimo isso. Já levei para a terapia e nada. As suas quartas feiras de escrita estão me ajudando muito.
Obrigado amigo.
FB
Thankyou Telamon,
I am gonna use this great energy you have crafted in this article and apply it to some fitness stuff that I keep putting on the back burner. Thanks again and have a Great Day !