How I Kicked My Own Ass into Finishing My Novel

I spent years talking about it, and then I decided to put my book where my mouth was.

Many of us want to be authors, few of us make it. This isn’t a story of my resounding success and how I got there, because I’m not there. I’m still one of the little minnows dreaming of becoming a goldfish. Well, not so much swimming as flailing around with a manuscript and an abundance of terrible query letters.

I’ve been working on my book series for years. I’ve got a whole thing planned. Multiple books, multiple characters, intertwining plots slivering through bigger plots that are linked to smaller plots that have even more twists and turns to snake through. It’s a massive jigsaw puzzle splashed across my computers, notebooks and brain.

Maybe I over scoped. Maybe I’m just paralysed by fear of actually crossing the finish line because then people start reading it and judging it. Maybe this whole project is shit and I should throw it out the window.

In recent weeks I’ve learned that once you start submitting your manuscript … that’s when it becomes real.

I think that’s where a lot of people get stuck. When it goes from your secret pet project to a piece of reality floating out there in the world, across the desks of…