So When Are You Finishing That Novel Anyway?

By: Ebonye Gussine Wilkins

So you finally got the courage to tell people that you are a writer. They usually want to know who you’ve written for (before they can decide to be impressed by you of course). If you tell people you are an author, they usually want to know who is your publisher (that’s an entirely different post of course). If you decide to self-publish, you usually get an “Oh” and general disinterest, or maybe even a snide remark. If this happens to you, just shrug it off and keep it moving. After all, you’ve done one of the harder parts: you’ve actually finished your manuscript.

For others, when you tell people that you are a writer, they want to know if you are writing a book. If you tell them you are working on a book, the first question that is asked is: “did you finish it?” It is probably the most annoying question you will ever get as an author. It implies that they don’t think you can or will finish it, and quite frankly, it is plain rude. But you get frustrated because you haven’t finished your book yet. Maybe you haven’t had time, or you’ve got writer’s block. Maybe you just don’t have the motivation to do it. The good news is, it can be done. You can finish a writing project. You will eventually present it to people. Then you can impress them with the fact that you finished it and got it published! (Getting them to buy your book is also another post.)

Luckily for you, you can take a few different approaches to finishing your book if you haven’t already. Stacey D. Atkinson, author of Stuck, has some advice for you. You can check out her advice here.

So tell us, how long have you been working on your novel? Why do you think you haven’t finished it yet? What are you doing to move past these obstacles. If you have finished it, what were the driving factors? Let us know in the comments! We want to hear from you!