How to Unstick Your Writing

Today we're talking about how to actually finish your nonfiction book.

And because I know that my recommendation here is maybe going to seem a little bit softer than you would have thought, I want to start with an actual client success story.

Now, I worked with Dr. Lisa Karanin a couple of years ago on her book, And this book had such an interesting trajectory that I just want to share a little bit more about it.

Now, Lisa studies the rhetoric of science, which is a fascinating area.

She is an expert, quite literally, on the way that we as a culture talk about things like our health.

Now, way back before 2020, she had started a book on pandemics and on the way that these viral spreads are not only something that is contagious in terms of actual virus, but also the way that the conversations about these viruses spread around our world.

Well, what could be more relevant than that now, right? But unfortunately, because she had started that book before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic hit us, she had really found herself knocked off track.

Now, when she came to me, she was feeling totally lost.

And it wasn't exactly what you might think.

This was not an issue where she didn't know what she wanted to say.

It was not an issue where she didn't think the book was important.

Of course, she knew it was.

The issue instead was that the book had sat on her hard drive for so long that she no longer had the confidence in her own ability to push forward on this book.

And y'all, this is what I see nine times out of ten when people are stalled.

Now, of course, most of the authors I work with do not have such a dramatic story as Lisa's, where, of course, they're working on a book that is suddenly so, so relevant.

I get why that was a particularly unsettling situation.

But even so, I do see this cycle of slog that really pulled Lisa in and made it really hard to escape from.

And the way this happens is usually it's in a couple of stages.

Now, oftentimes we will start out so, so excited about our new book project.

Of course, this is our creative outlet.

Oftentimes we've been thinking about it for a really, really long time and we're kind of waiting for the right time.

When that time hits, it can feel so, so satisfying, especially since Most of us, when we start a new book, we've kind of pre-rehearsed what the beginning parts of that book will be.

So when we sit down to write the first parts, oftentimes that is some of the fastest writing we will experience in the whole project.

But what happens next is that as the book starts to progress through, oftentimes we will start to hit more and more difficult barriers.

And at that point, something very natural and very human will start to happen, which is your brain will realize it needs more time to think about what you want to write before you can productively write.