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Why Does It Feel So Bad to Finish Your Book?
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August 3, 2018
Oakland, CA
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| | Why Does It Feel So Bad to Finish Your Book? You can read the post here or read on...
The itchy and scratchy of finishing a book and bringing it out…
When I am about to finish a book, whether I’m finishing the first draft, the final draft, or I’m about to publish my book, I get anxious, worried, even grouchy.
I noticed this in my clients too.
I was mentioning this to a friend and fellow NLP practitioner and he reminded me how every project completion (or stage completion) includes feelings of anger and grief.
Do you notice this in your own life?
How does it feel when you’re about to finish your book?
Some people will even create a way to extend the project and never finish, because facing the end of the project calls up feelings that are difficult to handle but entirely appropriate: anger, sadness, worry, grief.
Entirely appropriate emotional states, feelings, experiences.
My friend explained it this way: When we’re working on a project (like finishing a book) we have expectations and hopes about how it will turn out. But then when we finish the project, we know how it’s turned out. We just experienced it. So hope is gone, and reality is in its place.
Our hopes have been dashed. And hope feels good, really good. It’s probably the best feeling state we human experience.
So without hope, we feel angry, cranky, itchy and scratchy.
And that’s OK. And makes total sense.
If we have put a lot of hopes and dreams into our book, and then we complete the first draft, or the final draft, or truly finish your book, or hit the publish button, those hopes and dreams are now realities. And maybe we like the outcome. Maybe we don’t.
I don’t know about you, but most of the time reality doesn’t match my hopes and dreams — my expectations. So we feel sad or cranky. Totally normal. Totally OK.
But what if you were in the middle of a project, and you want to manage your expectations, so that you won’t go through such a dip of anger and anxiety, what do you do?
I have my ways that I’ll share here. Perhaps you have a few coping mechanisms too that help you manage your expectations about the outcomes of your creative projects. You can use these three steps at the start of a project, in the middle, as you’re finishing, or after you’ve completed your project.
#1: HOPES AND DREAMS
I get clear about my hopes and dreams for the book and I write them down. I check to see how realistic they are. Where are they on the scale of fantasy versus reality?
#2: GET FEEDBACK
I celebrate my big dreams and I ask for clarity from friends and those who love me to see how far out I am. I can’t always tell 🙂
#3: FEEL THE FEELS
I allow experience of my emotions, anger, the angst, the worry, that itchy and scratchy. It’s all OK. We humans are wired this way, so breathe.
YOUR TURN
How do you cope with the end of the project? I’d love to hear. Hit reply and let me know. And thanks!
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Resource: The friend I reference in this article is also my nonfiction editor, NLP Master Practitioner, Jon Low. More about him and how he helps people here.
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| Here's to your creativity! Happy writing!
Best,
Beth
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| | | You have been reading the Creativity Sparks Newsletter!
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You may share this content intact and with no changes with this attribution:
c. 2007-2018 Beth Barany, Creativity Coach for Writers, www.BethBarany.com
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BTW, I'm a working novelist too, with two series published in two genres, and more on the way. :)
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| ABOUT BETH BARANY
Beth Barany is creativity coach for writers, a teacher, workshop facilitator, and speaker, who helps fiction writers experience clarity, so that they can write and polish their novels, and proudly publish them to the delight of their readers.
Owner of the Barany School of Fiction, an online training hub, Beth takes great interest in how humans learn, create, and grow, and includes all her students’ life experiences, including the ancestors, into the moment.
She's also a novelist and writes magical tales of romance, adventure, and mystery to empower women and girls to be the heroes in their own lives.
Check out her Henrietta series here (YA Fantasy) and her Touchstone series here (Fantasy/Paranormal Romance).
Support her mission to empower women and girls with her fiction on Patreon here.
Read her latest book for writers, Twitter for Authors, here.
beth@bethbarany.com
Barany School of Fiction
Writer's Fun Zone blog
Photo Credit: by c. 2018 Ezra Barany
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