I sometimes wonder how many great novels are sitting in dusty drawers, half-finished, abandoned, perhaps forgotten. Novels that burst forth at the beginning, carrying their writer with them, but then hit a wall, before the writer gave up, exhausted, dispirited—perhaps not knowing that flagging energy is as much a part of novel writing as plot itself (and that there’s even a special type of creative magic to be found in such moments).
Too many novels have ended up this way. Writing a novel has been compared to months of pregnancy, running a marathon, climbing a mountain, or even going to war. And it can feel like all those things in one. This is why it’s worth thinking about the novels you’ve abandoned and ask if you gave up because the novel wasn’t good enough or because you lacked the stamina to see it through.
Here’s a curveball for you: There aren’t any great novels sitting in dusty drawers, because the stamina it takes to finish a novel is the same kind it takes to make a novel good. So, your main task as a novelist is to train for endurance and believe that the very act of finishing is magic itself.
“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop,” said Confucius, who had to be talking about novel writing.
As the executive director of National Novel Writing Month, I know that the 30 days
