3%?!?! (Probably Not lol)

If you’re reading this newsletter, you most likely have written for something at some point. High School or college papers, quick short stories, comics, songs, or even a fully-fledged novel. To the vast majority of creative minds, storytelling is an enticing and exciting endeavor. Imagining impactful character moments, building an interesting world, or developing a cool magic system are all things that writers and storytellers have done. I believe this is for very good reason! Its many of those thing that got us into writing.

All of that excitement for ideas bubble up and overflow for a little while, and many fledgling writers will sit down and begin to draft an outline for a chapter with our passions fully stoked.

But after a while, things start to fizzle out. According to online statistics (not reliable as I can’t find any studies), only 3% of writers actually complete projects that they set out to accomplish. You can find this stat pretty much everywhere you look for it online. I don’t think its true, and there are no studies or sources to back up the claim. Indeed, 83.56% of statistics are made up on the spot. However, whether or not that exact statistic is true isn’t what I take away from the idea. The interesting part to me is that us writers ourselves (The ones I’ve talked to, anyway) would generally conclude that the idea seems reasonable.

Out of one-hundred people, and all of the projects they’ve ever started, the idea that only 3 of those were brought to full completion doesn’t shock me. You see, the majority of writers find joy in creating, not the process of completing. Myself included.

Burnout, Perfectionism, and Insecurity

I believe these three things are what kills budding projects the most frequently. Something happens to writers, both experienced and unexperienced when beginning a new project right after around the 1/4th mark—maybe even as soon as the first chapter starts! Those who aren’t instantly halted by perfectionism are eventually caught by burnout after blitzing through the early section. If they make it further, insecurity in their writing will cause them to slow down. By that point, a new idea would have been formed, starting the process over.

Possible Solutions?

To anyone who’s experienced this cycle of creative life and death, the idea of completing a project may seem too distant and too challenging. I, as a creative at heart, have experienced it myself. However, since completing my first work, I’ve found that finishing projects is actually a completely separate skill removed from the creative process. I’m not the best writer out there or the most experienced. However, since completing Sacrifice of the Light 2.5 years ago, I’ve written 4 more books, each one about 110k words on average, and I’m currently 130k words into a new series! I’ve developed (and stolen) some tips I’d like to share that have helped me work around the cycle of creative death previously discussed.

Consistency

Consistency is the simplest answer to combat burnout. That burnout typically happens when overworking a new idea. Its always on your mind, and because you work so frequently at it and imagine so much, it eventually feels like you’ve already written the book in your head! This is one of the drawbacks some authors face when creating a hard outline. They put in so much time to thinking about everything, throwing away sleep in order to indulge in the excitement of a new creative endeavor. Instead of this, what I’ve done when starting a new project is mapping out a rough wordcount that I know I can commit to every week. It may feel tempting to go over at the beginning, but setting yourself up to actually hit goals is very rewarding, and will help carry you through the project.

Even if you wrote something as manageable as 300 words a day, you’d eventually have over 100k words by the end of the year! Once you’ve built a consistency, missing a few days or taking a few days off won’t hurt you! If you can’t write a book in a single day, you can’t fail your dream by missing one either!

Teachability

Experience and failure are both excellent teachers. They aren’t our favorite, but they do quite a bit in regards to our development. Those of us who struggle with perfectionism AND insecurity often hit the first roadblock before writing our opening word. There is a tendency to connect the quality of our early work on the project to our skill as writers, which then leads to a general shame or a feeling that we need to get it right the first time. As silly as it may sound, the fear are pressure certainly feel real. The artist, emotional and sensitive as we naturally are, don’t typically like our precious work to be scrutinized, especially not by ourselves.

The hurdle here is different than the previous, because its not a physical restriction or plan. It’s a mental hurdle. Grappling with the idea and reframing “not hitting your standard” to “learning how to be the writer you want to be” is a challenging one. Ultimately, though it hurts, it might just be something that comes down to acceptance. The way I gain that acceptance for myself is usually in the month before a new project I spend working on characters or worldbuilding. Maybe listening to other authors or reading their works.

Discipline

This might be the hardest part for the emotion-led spirit of a creative mind. Accepting teachability and planning for consistency are both excellent things, but applying them is a different beast entirely. In order to fully understand this, I needed to grapple with an undeniable truth: writing is not always fun. Sometimes, I’d quite literally rather clean and rearrange my entire room than write, finding anything that I can do instead of work on my project. I’m sure any writer reading this would agree this has happened to them.

“While writing isn’t always fun, it should be satisfying.” This quote by Brandon Sanderson excellently puts into words the push a pull between discipline and excitement. If writing isn’t for you because you get no satisfaction in any way, that is different then folding to resistance when writing gets challenging. The words you write on the days you don’t want to is you actively keeping the promise made to yourself at the beginning of your journey.


I hope reading this offered some interesting ideas or solutions you could think on, if you’re a writer. If you’re just a reader, I hope it was a cool look on what the majority of writers experience!

Winterson still releasing on April 8th!

Until the next newsletter, keep dreaming.

Sincerely,

Joshua Robello