You’ve turned in a little later than you’d planned. You need to get to sleep and wake up refreshed for that morning doctor’s appointment/conference call/job interview/flight. But there are only 50 pages left in the novel you’re reading, and you’re just beginning to guess at what secrets may be haunting the family. Your partner turns off the light; you keep reading. The clock turns past midnight; you keep reading.

Why can’t creating stories be as compelling as consuming them? If we could remain as interested in the things we write as we are in the things we read, well, there would be a lot more stories in the world. So why is it that writers have such a hard time finishing things?

Writing breeds uncertainty, and many of the outcomes can be out of your control. This is the landscape where fear thrives, in uncertainty and lack of control. Let’s consider some of the many fears that keep a writer from finishing.

FEAR: A MEDLEY

…of not being good enough.

Maybe you don’t have that talent thing so many people talk about. The problem with the idea of talent is that there is no talent judge. This isn’t a beauty pageant. And though some people (professors, publishers, journals, agents) will support your work and some won’t, there is absolutely no one who has been the definitive judge of what makes a writer “talented.” (See lists like this one for proof that talent isn’t discernible.)

…of lacking the proper background.

You’re worried that you didn’t go to a fancy college. Or because you did terribly in your English Comp classes, or because your high school creative writing teacher said your stories lacked “plot.” Or — one of the most anxiety-provoking biographical notes — you haven’t earned an MFA. MFA or no MFA, no writer has taken the same trail to finishing a book as another. You will find the particular trail that gets you to the end: your complete book.

…of not being disciplined enough.

None of us is disciplined enough without support. That’s why we take classes, talk to other writers, and read blog posts like this one. As poet and teacher Richard Hugo said in his excellent collection of essays on writing, “Writing is hard and writers need help.” Believe.

…of failing to write the book you hope to write.

Maybe you have your first draft down. You can identify about 34 problems with it, and you’re breathing into a paper bag, anticipating the hours of work that will go into making changes. What if the changes don’t make it any better? (They will.) Is this even a book? (Most likely.) Will the written story be as good as the one living in my mind? (Nope.) Ira Glass talks about the slow learning curve of making art. Because ambition is generally not stagnant but increasing, your attempts will never fully live up to your ambitions. This is the way of life.

…of negative or lukewarm reception.

For this fear, I turn to Andre Dubus, rumored to be an excellent writing teacher, from the book Conversations with Andre Dubus. He encourages writers to not worry about exterior things we don’t have control over.

“You’ve got enough challenge and what you have to do is not worry about whether there’s a spine of a book in your immediate future, and not worry about people who don’t understand what you’re doing, and not worry about your family who love you but thinks you should be doing something that will make you some money.”

In short, look at what’s in front of you, and write the best book you can. It’s the only thing you have any say over.

…of committing to years of drudgery with no guarantees.

For the years 1932–1933, Henry Miller made himself a work schedule. It started with 11 commandments, directed at himself, which somehow makes them easier to take because the writer meant this advice to be for himself. You can take what works for you, but not all of it will. Commandment number five is particularly insightful: “When you can’t create you can work.”

The pervasive myth of the writer as creative entity, following the muse, unable to perform basic math, leaves many writers shocked at the drudgery that comes with drafting, redrafting, trying and failing, sorting through point-of-view logic problems, submitting applications for publication, and keeping a job that actually provides an income in the process. Think of painters: they doodle, they wash their brushes, they go out in the world looking for images. When you can’t create, let yourself work.

…of not having the right conditions in which to write well.

You feel like you don’t have enough time or privacy or the right office space or fresh ideas or energy or concentration. This list of various ideal conditions is endless. There’s nothing wrong with knowing those conditions in which you write best, but you can’t wait for them. They will always change, and they will likely always require more disposable income than you’ll ever have. In the first “Art of the Essay” column published in the Paris Review, E.B. White says, “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

But then he adds, after the interviewer’s next question, great insight about the ebb and flow of writing.

“Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer — he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him. He waits for the surge (of emotion? of strength? of courage?) that will carry him along. I have no warm-up exercises, other than to take an occasional drink. I am apt to let something simmer for a while in my mind before trying to put it into words. I walk around, straightening pictures on the wall, rugs on the floor — as though not until everything in the world was lined up and perfectly true could anybody reasonably expect me to set a word down on paper.”

The perfect conditions will rarely be there. Take advantage of those surges, when the fear has abated, and write whenever, wherever you can.

There’s no getting around the fact that consuming art is much easier than creating it. All you can do is try to understand your writing fears and fight through them. Remind yourself that other writers have experienced the same fears. Knowing you’re not alone, and that other people made books despite their personal terrors, will help you get to the end.