You’re Closer to Finishing Your Book Than You Think

Here’s the one thing I wish every aspiring authorpreneur knew: You’re closer to having a book than you think.

I know writing a book has a certain reputation. Even writers I talk to sometimes marvel aloud at the ability to write a whole book. Before I started writing my book, I remember wondering if I had enough of an idea to make an entire book (rather than a blog post or a series of LinkedIn posts).

When you’ve never written a book before, it’s easy to think of it like summiting a mountain in a snowstorm—an epic, harrowing undertaking that requires you to white-knuckle your way to the finish line. 

But most of that fear isn’t about your book. It’s about your ghosts.

Everyone Has a Ghost, btw

Maybe your ghost is the voice that whispers, “Who are you to write this book?” Maybe it’s the memory of your English 101 professor, red pen in hand, bleeding all over your paper like you committed a crime against the English language. 🫣

Whatever flavor your ghost takes, they are probably the reason you keep starting and stopping. No matter how many times you tell other people at networking events that you’re working on a book, hoping saying it out loud will act like a magic spell, it’s no match for that ghost.

It’s no wonder writing a book feels scary. 

But what would happen if you thought about writing a book as a fun adventure?

I can hear you rolling your eyes. 

“Sure, Emily, writing my book is a ‘fun adventure’. The last time someone told me we were going on a ‘fun adventure’, my summer camp counselor took us on a 9-mile hike in the rain.” 

I get it. A grown-up nerd’s idea of a fun adventure might not be exactly what you have in mind.

So let me explain what I mean.

Gamify the Journey

Writing a book is hard, but it feels so good to do hard things!

And doing hard things doesn’t have to feel like absolute drudgery (in fact, if this is how it feels to write a book, I encourage you to find another way). Life’s too short and you have too many other options. Let’s look for the fun!

One way to make any adventure more fun is to lose yourself in the activities along the way—to stop white-knuckling toward the destination and start enjoying the path (yes, even in the snow and the rain).

Depending on your relationship with writing, you may not be able to get out of your head enough to lose yourself in the activity of writing. But you can think about what aspects you do enjoy.

Maybe you LOVE research. (If I could figure out how to get someone to pay me to do research, I would sign that contract—no questions asked.) If this is you, consider how you can make time to get lost down a research rabbit hole each day. This should be outside of your writing time of course (maybe it would serve as a good reward for hitting your word count goal). 

You can also look for ways to gamify the book writing process, especially the parts that you find particularly boring or scary.

Think of some rituals you can build in to reward yourself for completing certain tasks:

• Finished a 10-minute timed writing session? Eat a piece of the good chocolate—the kind you only get to have when you’re working on book-related tasks.
• Blocked off time on your calendar to write in July? Reward yourself with a chapter of that murder mystery you can’t put down. (I just started Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. Love.)
• Completed your high-level outline? Call a friend and catch up.

The rituals don’t have to be complicated. They just have to make writing your book feel a little more like play.

The Other Way to Make It Fun: Realize You’re Closer

The second way to make any adventure more enjoyable is the one buried in the title of this post: realizing you’re closer than you think. It’s like when the camp counselor swears the hike is 9 miles, and it turns out to be 8.5. That last half mile feels like a gift.

So let’s talk about all the ways you’re closer to finishing your book than you think.

Start by Mining Your Content

If you’ve been a speaker, coach, or consultant for at least 3 years, you are not starting from zero. You only feel like you are.

You have words in the form of blog posts, talk transcripts, social media posts, course modules, presentation notes, etc. All of this means instead of starting from a blank page, you get to go on a treasure hunt. 

Open a folder on your computer—a cozy little place for your book to live in its embryonic state—and start dropping in everything you’ve already created that might be the least bit relevant to the book you’re writing.

Hint: Finding your gold nuggets is easier if you already have a working outline.

Don’t overthink this. If you find yourself second guessing, or hear the haunting voice of your ghost, avoid judging the words your past self created. You’re not here to edit. You’re simply gathering raw materials.

If you notice something is missing—an idea you wish you’d included, a connection you want to make—just make a note and drop it in the file too. You can come back for it later.

Once you start pulling these nuggets together, it’s like flipping a lightswitch. Those ghosts start to look more like coat racks casting shadows. You look at the folder and realize: I have words. Real, usable, already-written words. You are not starting from scratch. You’re remixing.

Choose the Easy Path

Now, if you’re still feeling a bit distrustful of this book-writing-as-a-fun-adventure story I’m weaving, I understand. I too was raised to believe the only things actually worth doing are hard and to over-value drudgery and self-sacrifice. I’m working on unwinding these parts.

I see two paths for you: 

The Path of Darkness: You can spend a lot of time unhappily trying to write a perfect version of your book, and still fall short because no book you ever write will be perfect. 

The Path of Light: Or you can give yourself permission to write a messy draft and look for the fun to keep yourself engaged.

The choice is yours.

What do you tell your perfectionist ghost when that voice gets too loud? You can fix everything in the edit.

Right now, you’re hanging out on the edge of a cliff, tip-toeing, flailing your arms around, trying very hard not to fall. And it feels terrible. 

That’s because the scariest part of any leap isn’t the fall—it’s peering over the edge, deciding whether to jump.

So jump.

The moment you step off the cliff, your instincts will kick in. You’ll be doing the hard thing, maybe without even realizing it because at the same time you’ll be looking for the fun, and that’s what makes the leap a fun adventure instead of a fall.

You’re Closer Than You Think

The book you think is 9 miles away might actually be 8.5. The words you don’t remember writing are probably sitting in a folder of old blog posts and talk notes, waiting for you to re-discover them. The draft you think has to be perfect can absolutely be fixed in the edit.

So stop standing on the edge. Gamify the climb, make the leap, and trust that you’re a lot closer to The End than your ghosts want you to believe.

🧡 Emily

Image by @jigsawstocker at Freepick.