Why Finishing My Novel Scares Me

Confession time:

I've spent over half my life writing the same novel.

Of course by now I suppose it's not really the same novel. I think the only things I haven't changed are the first names of the main protagonist and, like, one minor character. And maybe a little bit of background information.

But essentially it's been the same project.

For sixteen years.

And would you believe it all started with one tiny Lego piece?

I'm not even exaggerating here.

One piece. Sixteen years of writing.

You did this to me, little Lego piece!
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When I was eleven I stuck a keypad to the gate of my Lego Night Lord's Castle (still a favorite) and got a story idea: What if two warring factions traveled back in time to give their past selves advanced technology and the upper hand?

This story had everything: two vastly different time periods, a stolen time machine, spaceships, castles, Tolkien-scale armies, gods and goddesses, a giant cannon that blows up the planet. Everything. I even started animating a movie because you just can't hold so much epicness in a book.

Looking back, it was pretty bad. But my story evolved as I evolved. Year by year, little by little, the story changed as I adjusted details--added a character here, dropped a scene there.

Ironically, time travel was one of the first things cut from the story. The plot shifted its focus from my original idea to the rise of a charismatic, vengeful clone super soldier; then to a war over monopolized energy; then to government-regulated life expectancy and reincarnation (which I may revisit eventually).

Needless to say, it's been a wild ride.

Now my story follows a disillusioned government agent who joins a movement to restore humanity to an abandoned world.

It looks nothing like what I started with. But this is the version I will finish. This is the version I want to publish.

It has to be. If I want to write books for a living, I simply can't spend half a lifetime on just one story anymore. And I have so many other ideas I want to play with, too!

So I took a month off of blogging to participate in NaNoWriMo and finally push this story all the way out.

And I didn't write a single page of my millionth rough draft.

I spent my November differently than other WriMo participants. While some of my writer friends stressed about daily word counts and overdosed on caffeine, I opened up a spreadsheet and broke my story down scene by scene until I had a final, detailed outline--another milestone I'd never reached before.

It really helped me to spend November focused on planning. Now I'm ready.

I'm ready to get this story out, once and for all.

I'm ready to flesh out my childhood dream and finish the adventure of a lifetime.

. . . But I can't help but be a little scared.

I can't help but ask what if.

What if I keep getting new ideas for this story?

What if my characters have something else to do?

What if I don't know how to write an ending?

I've retreated into this story's world practically every day since I was eleven. Though their names and roles have changed, I've known these characters longer than I've known the vast majority of my real friends.

How can I let my story out into the world? How will I know it's finished?

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I think fear of finishing freezes most writers at some point. We want to publish perfection. We edit and edit and edit some more, and some of us never take the plunge and push "Submit."

I don't have a cure for that.

But I can remind myself to determine which ideas make my story better and which ones only make it different.

I can flesh my characters out the best I know how, build momentum through the beginning and middle of the story, and burst into the finale with guns blazing.

I have to tell myself every single day that now is the time. No one's going to read the book I never write. This is what that story idea was born to do.

And I'm excited--because now is the time.