How to Finish that Unfinished Writing Project By Melinda Harris

Starting a writing project is the easy part, but finishing it can be frustrating and time consuming. It is easy to begin typing a new idea, but the real task is in sitting down and finishing them. I personally have several projects in some unfinished purgatory state on my laptop’s hard drive. New ideas keep on popping up and take priority over the older stories that are at a standstill. It is so easy to collect unfinished drafts, but here are some tips to help you power through and finish your writing projects.

Create a Schedule and Set a Goal
To finish a project, you need to set aside time to write. If you don’t, then it doesn’t become a priority and gets put on the backburner. Decide what time works best for you: morning, afternoon, or night, and set aside a few hours. Devote this time to writing without any distractions. Maybe find a writing location that helps keep you focused. Set a goal for how many words you want to type in a day or how many you need to type in a month. These ideas should help you make progress easily.

Create an Outline
Teachers teach this concept to everyone from an early age, so this shouldn’t be a surprising tip. Outlining helps keep your story going in your head and gives you an idea of what needs to happen in what order. This helps you write without a break because you know exactly what needs to happen next and keeps the writer’s block at bay.
How you write an outline depends on the writer and the project. For a short story, you obviously don’t need a long outline. A novel, will need some extra details. Here are some useful formats that can be used:

• A bullet-pointed list in a word document.
  • This list uses short phrases/sentences and can be easily edited. It is simple and does what it needs to. It can be segmented, but may not need it, depending on the writer.
• A full sentence outline
  • This format, like its title says, uses full sentences to summarize. How it is organized is up to the writer. It can be segmented into chapters or scenes, depending on how long the work is or what works for the writer.
• A scene tracker
  • This format takes a lot of dedicated work, but can help keep the writing flowing. It outlines every scene that you plan on happening, the chapter it happens in, how each scene affects the main character, what symbolism/theme it creates, and your word count goal. Of course it is your scene tracker, so you can edit it to keep track of what you want. These can be formatted in a table in a word document or on an excel spreadsheet. And there are templates that are easily found online.

Just Write
The goal should be to write a first draft, not a finished draft. Write what you can, you can always edit later. Your goal should just be to keep the plot moving forward and finish your work of progress.