How To Finish

Three ways of thinking that might help you get the damned novel done, from our beloved 12-Month Novel Generator instructor, Lynn Steger Strong (author of HOLD STILL)

Lynn is teaching a six-week novel workshop with us in May. You can sign up here.

Nobody cares if you finish your novel. Maybe that one girlfriend from six years ago who was very young and thought your fame was imminent. Who said to everyone she knew that you were “working on a novel,” until three years went by and there still wasn’t any novel. Now you mostly only whisper about your novel to yourself. Sometimes, if you’re very drunk, your partner lets you talk about it, but only if you promise not to cry again.

No one cares if you finish your novel, but they do look forward to the day when you don’t “have to work” both before and after the job that pays you. Instead of finishing your novel, they suggest you take one of those jobs they’re always hearing about anecdotally, like celebrity ghost writing, composing copy for an ad firm, or “breaking into” TV.

“You’re so smart, though,” they say, sadly, trying not to look straight at your slippers or the stains on your t-shirt and sweatpants. “You could make money if you wanted to.”

Some of you will not finish your novel. That’s okay also. Maybe you’ll find one of those jobs or just keep teaching or sell your screenplay. Maybe some of you are also already doctors or lawyers, and the process of half-writing a novel will remind you why you went to all that other school.

For those of you who don’t stop writing, though, there’s the question of how, when no one really cares and there’s no deadline, when there’s no time all of a sudden and you’re tired. There are many reasons to stop, but if you, like me, can’t stop, did not stop when any sane person would have stopped, you must then find a way to get it down.

It’s different for everyone. I’ve heard so many maxims, said some of them. Write everyday. Make rituals. Make spreadsheets. But there are thousands of ways to get this done.

With that in mind, take this for what it is: three ways of thinking, instead of specific actions, that might help to get the damn thing done.

One: You Are Not Dostoyevsky

I was once having lunch with a friend of mine who is also a writer. She used to be my teacher. She’s accomplished more than most of us. She had a new book coming out and I asked about it. Oh well, she said. (She has perfect gestures.) Now that I know I’m not Dostoyevsky, it’s just another book of mine. I happen to know this woman is as close to Dostoyevsky as our present moment could allow, and yet I also understand how none of her work is what she wishes it to be.

We all have grand ambitions. We all have ideas about the books we want to write, but, just like every other part of life, the reality is a bit more flawed and wanting. Language is hard and complicated and has an infinite number of limits. Books are constricting containers and plot and character demand certain mechanical choices that might feel less than we hoped at first. The books we write will be lesser versions of the books that live inside our heads.

Please mourn this quickly.

Now, imagine: you no longer have to be Dostoyevsky, or [insert here] the bolded all caps name you think of when you don’t measure up. Your book will fail in thousands of ways, but what are the ways in which you know you can succeed? Think of all the ways the books you love fail. Spend some time, in the face of this, considering your strengths and the small surmountable ways you might actually pull something off.

Two: Find Your Systems

I write my best after running 10-12 miles in the morning. I wrote the beginning of my most recent novel on my way home from the Whitney, on the subway, on my phone. I need music for early drafts and later read everything out loud and need quiet. For more final drafts I have to print the whole thing out and mark it up by hand and then re-type from scratch.

All of this is knowledge I’ve acquired over years of trial and error, over maddeningly unproductive days spent scrolling and hating myself. I’ve learned there’s a level of tired that can be productive, like when I wake up very early and the kids are still asleep and my brain is in some foggy place that sometimes conjures surprising cadences. I’ve learned that if the four- year-old’s been up all night puking and I taught the whole day before and have run out of coffee, I can maybe fiddle with something, but nothing new will come and no large edits will be done.

This is important because it helps me think about the type of accountable I need to be that day (while trying, always, to hold myself accountable): Should I force myself to Make New Work or should I let the blank pages stay blank and sharpen pages I’ve already made? Should I go run or walk and shake the fog out? Could the fog be interesting, if I try not to have too much control? Should I read or go look at art or ride the subway back and forth with a notebook?

This is all writing. It could all also be procrastinating. Much of making this your life is learning to know when and what is which for you. Much of finishing a novel is acknowledging that there are more steps than only writing. There is editing, planning, plotting, re-drafting, asking questions, getting distance. Part of getting to the end is knowing how and when you might accomplish each of these steps.

Three: Be Merciless About Time and Space

When our first baby was a baby I gave her to my husband a couple times a week for two hours and walked to the coffee shop by our house and mostly ate chocolate croissants and read or cried. I made too much breast milk and I leaked the whole time I was out and my boobs hurt. It was embarrassing but I didn’t go home. I took notes in favorite books, wrote in a notebook and on my phone, scrolled through pictures of the baby on my phone.

I went because I knew enough to hold that time for when I’d want it again. I wanted to retain the muscle memory for all of us. I refused to forget, to let my family forget, that this is part of who I am.

I often teach night classes to grown ups with families and obligations, but they all somehow find the space to show up to a three hour class. When class ends, I tell them not to give the time they found to take class back. For six weeks, or six months, their lives have managed to make space to come to class each week. They don’t need to give it back. Their partners have figured out how to make dinner; their colleagues have figured out how to talk to them before they left the office. They can take that time and go somewhere that isn’t their house and think about their work with the same rigor we have each week. They should keep it. They need to keep it.

What work needs more than any other thing is space and time and those are things one has to fight for mercilessly in the face of actual life.

If you need help claiming that space for yourself, add yourself to our notify list for the next session of our novel generator! The second iteration will begin in early fall, 2019.