Hi! I’m Keris. I’m a bestselling author writing about books and writing and life, and the last song I listened to was God Person by Madi Diaz on my Spotify Release Radar playlist, which is usually pretty well calibrated to my taste, but not this week! I do like Madi Diaz tho.
My weekend posts are for paid subscribers. Paid subscriptions help support me and my writing, plus you get to read extracts from my various works-in-progress.
(If you’d like to upgrade, but can’t pay right now, email me and I will add you, no questions asked.)
Last weekend I wrote about how I was struggling to finish my novel and in a real flap about it and then on Tuesday I wrote how I’d just gone and done it and it was fine!
And then I remembered that I wrote about exactly this in the very novel I was trying to finish.
“I remember your book meltdowns, you know. I’ve still got the list.”
She laughs. “Have you really?”
“I laminated it.”
Years ago, we made a list of the things we both always said when we were struggling with a book:
This is impossible.
I can’t do it.
It’s too hard.
Tell my agent I died.
I’m just going to scrap the whole thing and start again.
I really think this would be easier if I had a new laptop.
Maybe I should write it by hand.
And then always, at some point, it would start to come together. And occasionally it would be almost… fun. And then we’d type The End and be delighted and relieved and think it was the best job ever. And then we’d start another book and what the actual fuck, it’s too hard.
WHEN WILL I LEARN??
I haven’t started a new book this time because I still have another two books to finish, but I did start to think of all the things that are wrong with the book I just sent to my agent, so that’s fun.
Anyway. There are a few things that helped me deal with the finishing the book meltdown that I would like to share.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Happy Endings to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.