Lessons from Finishing a Book (from almost giving up to thriving)

A novel draft that stalled for months ultimately turned into a fast, “effortless” write once momentum finally clicked—after a brutal stretch where the problem wasn’t writer burnout so much as the book’s internal mechanics. The core lesson is practical: when scenes won’t move and relationships won’t “ping-pong,” keep writing long enough to force momentum into existence, then revise what’s broken later.

The project began with a strong creative pull in May 2021, while work on a previous novel (“Holding a Ghost”) was still underway. The author felt the new story—initially nicknamed “Sulfur is” and later likely to be retitled—captured her current style and interests in a way that earlier work had foreshadowed. After finishing “Holding a Ghost” in summer 2021, burnout hit hard, delaying full drafting. Editing dominated most of 2022, and the first real drafting push started in late August 2022, with two preliminary chapters already written (about 8,000 words total). The main character, Rowan, also evolved from earlier conceptions: at first closer to “Sybil” from “Honey Vinegar,” then shifting into a distinct voice that made the character fun to write.

Drafting quickly revealed a mismatch between excitement and execution. Although the author loved drafting in past projects—especially the early “magic” of discovering new story elements scene by scene—this time the work felt like “pulling teeth.” Scenes didn’t land on the line level, and the plot wouldn’t cohere. The struggle wasn’t easy to diagnose; it seemed to come from subtle character and relationship dynamics that refused to energize one another.

The book’s structure relied on a six-arc framework, and the author pinpointed the second arc as the main bottleneck: it’s where relationships start moving, particularly the central bond between Rowan and her sister-in-law, Susanna. Around that core relationship sat a web of other ties—Susanna’s dad, Susanna’s half-brother (mostly off-page), Rowan’s best friend Meredith, Rowan’s parents, and another character, Raymond—roughly seven to eight relationships that needed to interact to create forward motion.

By early November 2022, the author tried a “Nanowrimo” version: writing every day without word-count pressure, with a built-in test—if daily writing didn’t fix the draft by the end of November, the book would be set aside for later. The first week was miserable. Then, around the middle of the month, a small scene kick-started a causal chain where relationships began affecting each other. From that point, the draft became shockingly smooth, and the remainder of November produced strong momentum.

After a December break and a late-February restart following health issues, the author aimed to finish by the end of May. A trip to Europe (Portugal) accelerated the urgency, leading to writing every day for the remaining sections. The final push produced unusually high output—one day topping 5,000 words—and the author finished the draft quickly, with only part two still disliked. The takeaway is twofold: keep trying through the hard phase because tiny realizations can unlock the whole draft, and commit to making the book work—especially when the “problem” appears to be the draft itself rather than the writer’s capacity to write.