The Challenge of Finishing Drafts

Pushing past resistance to acceptance

Finishing drafts and resistance

If you’re like me, finishing drafts, or finishing things in general, can be difficult. It can be hard to transition from the process and routine of working on something to cleaning it up. Right now, I’m working on the second draft of my novel, and while it is cool to see it shaping more and more into a book, I miss the first draft stages. During the first draft, I just had a daily word count I tried to hit. It didn’t matter how bad it was; getting words on paper was all that mattered. All of the the problems in my first draft were something future me had to deal with. And now she is.

But the hope of all first drafts is that they continue and transform into final drafts, hopefully into published books.

This means that, even if you finish the first draft, you aren’t finished. There’s still a second draft, maybe a third draft, proofreading, and the whole querying process if you’re trying to get published. It’s a long journey.

Yet, the further along in the journey, the more resistance I feel to actually finishing the process. And this isn’t a new feeling, nor is it unique to this book draft. For a long time, I’ve had the internal narrative that I am a person who doesn’t finish things. It’s a narrative I’m trying to rewrite, particularly through my journaling practice, but it has a sneaky way of popping up again and again when I get frustrated with my second draft. Even though it really isn’t true. I might struggle with finishing things and meet a lot of resistance, but I get done what needs to get done.

But, I think I’m starting to figure out why I have so much resistance to finishing things. You see, finishing things means I have to accept my shortcomings. As long as something is still a draft, be it a book, short story, poem, essay, or whatever, it is still a work in progress. And as a work in progress, there’s plenty of room left to improve. It isn’t done after all.

But to declare something finished is to accept it as it is.

By not declaring something finished, you’re protecting yourself from judgement. This could be judgement of the work or judgement of yourself as a creator and an artist. You have the excuse to shrug off any criticism when you can say, It’s just a draft. I’m still working on it.

Working towards acceptance

I am someone who has perfectionistic tendencies. While I’ve learned that there can be benefits to this as a creative person (i.e. By always seeing room for improvement, I constantly raise the bar), it is also stifling, especially when it comes to finishing things and declaring them finished. I’m getting frustrated in the second draft because it isn’t a perfect draft, even though I know I still have more drafts to go. It is my second book ever after all, and of course I still have room to improve. I’m still learning. But I have to fight that frustration because it is leading me towards inaction.

It is one thing to be aware of the fact that you have room to grow. It is another to let that fact stop you from sharing your art. Think of it this way: When you write that bestseller, fans might line up to read your backlog and see how you have improved. Those first self-published copies you took down because you got embarrassed as you got better? Maybe they’ll be collectors’ editions someday. Regardless, you have to be able to finish things and move on to keep improving and keep growing.

Let me give you an example. Taylor Swift is my inspiration as a creative and a businesswoman. She is probably one of the biggest artists of our generations. But she got started at a young age, releasing her first album as a teenager back in 2006. And while I loved her first album a couple of years later as an eight year old, there is no comparison between her first album and her last two. Her voice, her songwriting, her storytelling, her lyricism . . . it all has improved.

Imagine if seventeen-year-old Taylor Swift let not being as skilled as thirty-year-old Taylor Swift stop her. We wouldn’t have the incredible albums we have today, nor an extensive backlog, nor the excitement of her re-records and seeing how she improves on old material.

Your projects tell the story of your creative journey.

Go ahead, push through and finish your project. It might not be perfect, but if you’re satisfied with it, you can declare it done and move on to the next one. And guess what? You can take the skills you sharpened with that last project to the next one. With each project, you will improve. But that improvement can’t happen if you get stuck in a spiral of perfectionism.

The Challenge of Finishing Drafts was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.