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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36503
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 **The advice is simple. Nail your butt to the couch and type.**

It won't always be fun, and your first draft will be very bad. If your expectation is to finish a beautiful story painlessly with a blissful experience throughout ... :-) You see from experience why this isn't what happens.

Also, each part of a story is different. Writing the beginning is writing the setting and introducing the characters. Lots of description. If you have a vibrant imagination this should be relatively straightforward. Writing the middle is all about complications, commitments, ups and downs, successes and failures. You need to be able to strategize out and think about the plot line, something that was not so necessary in part one of your story. You also need to pay attention to tension, make sure you have interesting scenes, challenges, complications that keep people reading. The third part has to take everything to eleven, and tie it all up too, in a way that is satisfying. Really hard. This is where you realize you did parts one and two wrong. :-) The ending is a mess. You plow through it anyway,

...And then you have a complete draft. It might be bad. But it's complete.

Then comes the editing. I'm in the camp that believes writing is rewriting.

Your issues are common. I'm dragging my heels on starting my next book because I want to get the first one perfect first - but i should dig into book two and start writing it. I should nail my butt to the couch and type. I will. I promise, I will.

There is a lot online about the difficulty with finishing a novel. Here's [a nice description](https://thewritepractice.com/henry-miller-on-how-to-finish-your-novel/) of Henry Miller's experience with this. But it really boils down to just put words paper and fix them after.

Original score: 14