PERFECTIONISM

Another reason manuscripts don’t get finished has to do with perfectionism. I am guilty of this. A lot like this picture, a story is a work of art that takes months to complete.

4. The writer constantly rewrites chapters before the first draft is complete. Save major rewriting until you’ve finished the first draft unless you want to overhaul the plot and it would be really confusing to push forward with what you have. Even if you outline, there’s no way to predict which ways you will adapt and change your outline over the course of writing the book until you actually do.

This is hard for me. I usually have to overhaul my plots at some pointcircus4

5. The author sends it out for beta-reviews too early and gets discouraged. Unless you’re stuck, I wouldn’t get reviewers involved before the first draft is complete.  Getting a review that points out these issues early in the development process could shake the author by convincing him/her that the story doesn’t have much promise.  When you’re ready to rewrite, you can make nearly anything better.

circus5

Don’t worry about perfection until you have a draft completed.