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Alfred's Serif Users' Forums → Art & Literature → The Writer's Block
I'm doing a bit of research on writers who don't finish their books.
For those with unfinished or unstarted stories: what specific emotional or physical constraint stopped you? (e.g., lack of time, lack of focus, fear of publishing market)."Don't give away the story or plot. I'm not researching the 'what', I'm researching the 'why'.
Are you looking for writers who have never finished a book? Or writers who have completed books, but might not have finished specific books they started?
I'm doing a bit of research on writers who don't finish their books.
I remember you had an unfinished book on your hands a few years ago, Lon. Is it still unfinished? If so, is this research something you’re doing in order to provide yourself with an excuse for not finishing the book? 
I remember you had an unfinished book on your hands a few years ago, Lon. Is it still unfinished? If so, is this research something you’re doing in order to provide yourself with an excuse for not finishing the book?
I’ve just noticed that the topic title is “The Writer’s Block” rather than the more general “Writers’ Block” — i.e. singular rather than plural — which does tend to reinforce the notion of a personal journey.
I'm really looking for the reasons that have stopped a potential writer from completing their story idea. I polled my sibs, a couple who have had expressed desires to write 'the great American novel'. Time was mentioned. Plus, there was the excuse of running out of ideas, structure, direction, after just a couple of chapters. I visited Reddit and found a whole lot of answers that fell into similar categories (time, structure). I also ran into validation issues. ("My family won't even read what I wrote), and ("My writing got slammed, and I never wrote another word."). Then, there were a couple of honest admissions ("Even I thought my writing was boring and lifeless.").
I'm just curious. I have my own reasons and 'time/energy' are at the top of the list, followed closely by how one tackles the publishing gauntlet.
I'm tinkering around with the idea of a platform to help creative people monetize the core idea of their unfinished stories, addressing the common problem that time, fear, and lack of readership often prevent great concepts from ever being completed. This platform would be designed as a low-risk, high-value exit ramp for those brilliant concepts, allowing creators to get paid and receive market validation for their ideas without having to write a full novel.
Ali, what a delight to see you here.
Alfred, like a lot of writers, I've got a shelf full of ideas, half-finished projects, things that sound pretty good, but no time to develop them. So, I've been dinking around with an idea and the belief that I'm not alone. Just a bit of sleuthing around yesterday indicated to me that it's a widespread problem. I saw some forum posts where mates in a writing class were cruel in their criticisms, causing the writer to never compose another sentence. Or, the family members who ridiculed a writing idea. Or, it was just time and family obligation constraints. Or, it was lack of self confidence. The reasons are legion. Then, when you stack the reasons up against the millions of titles published each year, along with the publishing nightmare itself, the rejection slips, etc. Well, it's no wonder that would-be writers just forget about the whole process, myself included. I'm just now publishing https://thepitch.cafe/ (a work in progress also), to try and address the problems. Just doing a quick holding page with WPX8. My plan is to get an actual website developer to build this out, as it promises to be pretty complicated. Just now working on a mobile version.
If you don't want brutal honesty, stop reading now.
First, let's quickly deal with some of the excuses. Too often, writing groups or critique groups are filled with people that endlessly write and rewrite their material, subject it to critiquing, and endlessly revise and rewrite and revise and never finish anything. So be careful if/when joining a group. As to family and friends not wanting to read it, unless they are regular readers and readers of the genre and type of book you are writing, why would they? Even if they do read it, their input may not be valid if they are not familiar with your genre.
The other common excuse is a lack of time. Rarely is that true. What is usually true is that the would-be writer does not make the time to write. The prospective writer could be writing instead of posting on forums, scrolling on social media, watching television, and so on. Yes, the reasons for not writing, for not completing a book are legion. The difference between those that finished their books and those that do not is that the former stopped making excuses and instead made time to write.
If a would-be writer's work is not important enough to them to make the time to finish it, why should anyone else care about it?
In my opinion, would-be writers don't need a website to justify their excuses for not finishing their books. Instead, they need to sit down and write their books.
It took me about 25 years or so to finish my first novel, so I know all about all the excuses. And then I made the time and wrote regularly and finished and then later published the book. If you want to finish a book, you sit down and finish the book. It's as simple as that. And, I know there is going to be but this or but that, but there are numerous writers who faced the same issues yet pushed ahead and finished their books.
If a would-be writer cannot make the time to finish their book, yet can find time to post on forums, waste time on social media, watch television, watch TikTok/YouTube/Facebook/whatever videos, or sit around doing this or that, then finishing their book is obviously not as important to them as they pretend it is.
And, honestly, it's never been easier to find time to write. Think about writers in years past . . . Writers that had to write by candlelight or moonlight. Writers that had to write everything by hand and then rewrite by hand. Even when typewriters came, writing a second or third draft meant retyping everything. And now we have word processors on our computers. Think of all the time saved by not having to literally rewrite every word or retype every page to make changes. And, most people have laptops or tablets, which means they can write anywhere, anytime.
The bottom line is that would-be writers need to stop making excuses and start writing. Either that or they need to accept that maybe writing just isn't important to them and they should move on to other things.
Beautifully expressed, @dcr! Thanks for taking the time to write it all down and share it with us here.
I only hope this hasn’t been an excuse for you to stop working on something else.
All valid points, @dcr. I certainly came across similar sentiments while poking around Reddit. While I don't have too many writer friends, I hear that same message in their own self-criticisms, "Well, I guess I just need to sit down and write." I've said the same words. Thanks for taking the time to comment. It's difficult to express how valuable your comment is. Thanks again.
Alfred's Serif Users' Forums → Art & Literature → The Writer's Block
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