Why Finishing a Novel is Hard

Beginning a novel is not so hard. Given a little time, a spark of inspiration, and an idea, a writer can get pretty far.
But the closer a novel gets to being finished, the bigger other projects become to distract a writer from finishing. This is how houses get bought and sold. This is how one decides it’s time for a new car or to take out the whole lawn and replace it with a rock garden. This is how one just happens to go shopping for a puppy and comes home with two dogs and a goat.
One of the best things about writing a novel is a lot of odious household chores get done instead — dish washing, lawn mowing, laundry, weeding, ironing dress shirts, waxing the car, checking e-mail and one’s regular mail box, although no one has received an actual letter since sometime in the late ’90s.
It's amazing how often, in the middle of writing an especially challenging scene, a writer will realize the time has come — and not a minute too soon — to regrout the bathroom tile. If ordinary life-changing events are not sufficient to stop a writer from finishing, then natural disaster can be brought in. It is safe to say earthquakes, fires, and tsunamis are not caused by angry gods. These cataclysmic events are the result of novelists who are roaring along, three quarters of the way done with their novels, and they need something big to stop their momentum.
Why is it that it is so hard to finish writing a novel? The biggest reason is that a novel has to be very good in order to make it through the stages of finding an agent, selling to a publisher, and then persuading the public to buy and read the final product.
In the fresh bloom of inspiration, a writer doesn’t worry so much about these things, but when the end of the writing is in sight, it is painfully clear that if one finishes, the next step will be to put the manuscript out into the world to suffer scrutiny and possible rejection. Nobody likes rejection. So most people try to avoid it.
It’s estimated there are between 10 and 15 thousand novel manuscripts written for every one that gets published. If a hardworking writer hears these numbers (true or not), it is a very good reason to forget about writing, call a like-minded friend, and go for an all-day lunch laced with many fruit-flavored martinis.
So what’s a writer to do? Get a therapist? Take up golf? Walk the dogs and goat acquired in an earlier paragraph? Sure. But after that, the only choice is to give up writing … or to schedule writing time and get back to work. If one focuses and puts in the writing time, one will finish. That's a promise.
After finishing there are still fear of failure and fear of success to deal with. There are many possible pitfalls in regard to agents, editors, publishers, reviewers, and the public. There is no author alive who doesn’t have a litany of publishing war stories to tell.
This writing business is not for sissies. And if one is crazy enough to want to be in it, then one has to, at the very least, finish writing the book. One has to face the blank pages and fill them up. One has to do it brilliantly. And then one has to offer this baby to the wolves.
As unlikely as it seems that a fully informed person would continue to write, the truth is there are a few million who are willing to take the odds and do the work.
Some novels will never be finished. Some will be finished but will never sell. And a few will be brilliant and rise to critical acclaim and/or bestseller status. Pick your goal and go back to work.
You can call yourself a writer from day one, but you can only have a chance at being a successful author if you finish your book.