I have noticed two curious things since I first started teaching writing workshops for adults:

1. Oodles of people have started to write a novel

2. Hardly anybody ever finishes the novel they started to write

I began to wonder about that. Not so much about WHY people don’t finish their novels; creating a functional universe out of thin air is a pretty improbable thing to do in the first place. What I did start wondering about was how on earth anyone EVER manages to finish writing a book.

I think it boils down to two things: Fear and Mortification

I’m speaking for myself, of course. I’m sure there are many writers who have far more noble motives for finishing their novels.

After I graduated from college I started writing a novel (for grown-ups). The first six chapters were a cinch. I was cruising on that gorgeous creative urge that gives you super-human confidence.  All you writers know what I mean. It’s the same creative urge that makes people think that raising a kid will be easy-peasy or that renovating the kitchen will only take a week of being inconvenienced. It must be a biological imperative of some sort. Without it, there would be no novels, no kids, and crappy-looking kitchens.

Anyway, surprise, surprise, I hit a wall. Suddenly I had no idea what to write next. Flash-forward eight years.  I am a waitress in a small college town. No, I am a Waitress/Writer. I still haven’t given up the ghost, but man oh man, that ghost was growing dimmer by the day. My novel is still unfinished. All my friends and acquaintances know I am an aspiring writer, and when you are a waitress in a small town, the majority of your customers are friends and acquaintances. Every time I plopped down a bowl of Pad Thai on one of their tables and asked if there was anything else they needed, I felt mortified. There is nothing like being asked “How is the writing going?” by the very people whose water glasses you are refilling.

My ego couldn’t bear it. So I pushed on when I might have just stopped. I kept taking dainty stabs at my languishing novel. It wasn’t much but it made me feel slightly less mortified.

Then providence entered in the form of a punky, smart-mouthed young waitress. She was also a writer, and she also had a languishing novel. So we made a pact. We actually signed a contract, slipped it into a bottle and threw the bottle into Cayuga Lake (which I’m sure is not only illegal, but also ecologically irresponsible). Our contract stated that we would e-mail each other two pages of writing every day, no matter how lousy that writing was, and we would not stop until we had finished our novels.

Guess what?  Both of us finished our novels in about six months, after they had been festering for nearly a decade.

What was the magic ingredient? Fear and Mortification.

We both had enough respect for each other to feel like complete losers if we failed to produce those daily two pages. We held each other accountable, and that, I am convinced, was what made all the difference.

These days I have book contracts to supply me with a steady diet of Fear and Mortification when the creative urge fails me. But for those of you writers who are still waiting for the contracts, I suggest finding a writing partner.

Here are some suggested rules for a successful partnership:

1. Choose someone whom you are slightly afraid of.

2. Decide how many pages or words you are going to produce, as well as how many days a week you will produce them.

3. Don’t worry about the quality of your writing. It may stink for a while. But it won’t always stink. Before long you will be marvelling at your own brilliance.

4. Let your writing partner know which parts of the story or which characters are particularly intriguing. There should be quite a bit of cheerleading going on, by the way.

5. Do NOT critique each other’s work. I feel very strongly about that. A work-in-progress should be handled as tenderly as a baby. Would you poke and prod an infant to see if she has the chops to make a fine adult? I know you would not.

If all else fails, you can always start waiting tables.