The Drafting Fix That Helps Writers Actually Finish Their Books

Stuck in your draft? Learn brain-based strategies to build a writing process that supports your creativity and helps you finish your novel.

You’re Not Broken—Your Writing Process Is

You’ve done the writing sprints. You’ve outlined. You even gave yourself permission to write a messy first draft.

But the story isn’t what you imagined. And if you’re like a lot of writers I work with, you’re probably thinking…

Maybe I’m just not cut out for this.

Let me stop you right there. You’re not the problem. Your writing process is.

Because this is the stage where your dream for this story grinds to a halt—not from any lack of natural talent, but from hitting a turning point no one really talks about.

I’ll show you why you freeze up even when the end is in sight, what’s actually going on in your brain, and three strategies on how to adapt your writing process so you can finish your novel.

And you’re not going to want to miss the third strategy, because it’s the single most powerful thing you can do for yourself and your writing.

Understand: Your Brain Wants to Finish

Your first draft was never supposed to be perfect. It’s not even meant to be readable yet. It’s meant to tell the story to you—to give shape to everything that’s been swirling in your imagination.

But that’s also the problem. Because even if you managed to snap out of perfectionism this time and got further than ever before…

As you give this story even imperfect form, something changes on a deeper level. Reality hits.

Somewhere along the way, the story stops being just for you—and becomes something you hope others will read. That shift is brutal. Oh yes, you always knew this was your goal, but it wasn’t real yet like it is now.

The stakes feel higher. You’ve put in time, energy, emotion—and the draft is still far from publishable. Every awkward sentence, plot hole, or unfinished scene starts to look like proof that maybe you’re just not good enough.

This Isn’t Just Emotional—It’s Neurological

When writing starts to feel high-stakes—when fear of failure, rejection, or just getting it wrong creeps in—your limbic system takes control.

It doesn’t see a novel. It sees a threat.

And when it detects that threat, it overrides the creative parts of your brain and kicks you into fight, flight, or freeze mode.

Your brain is trying to protect you—from failure, from judgment, from uncertainty. But in doing so, it shuts down the very systems you need to keep writing, like creative flow and narrative immersion.

So you freeze. Or stall out just shy of the finish line. Or backtrack to “fix” what you’ve written instead of moving forward.

That urge to revise mid-draft? That’s your executive control network kicking in—your perfectionistic inner editor.

But when it’s constantly on, it suppresses your default mode network—the daydreaming, imagination side that helps you simulate emotion, generate new ideas, and stay immersed in the character’s experience.

Why You Might Freeze: Overwhelm from Unresolved Story Problems

There’s another reason you might be stuck: your brain knows something feels off, even if you’re not fully conscious of it yet.

• Maybe the character’s arc is shaky
• Maybe the stakes don’t escalate the way they should
• In-scene emotional moments don’t pack the punch you want
• Or plot knots got complex and bigger than you think you can untangle

You might not be able to name the problem—but you feel it.

That kind of uncertainty builds cognitive overload.

You’re not just writing scenes—you’re juggling continuity, character logic, worldbuilding, and emotional payoff while trying to stay creative and keep momentum.

That kind of mental load taxes your prefrontal cortex—the brain’s command center—and leaves you blank, stuck, or ready to procrastinate by doing literally anything else every time you try to get back to your draft.

You’re Not a Bad Writer—Your Process Is Misfiring

If you’ve lost momentum—or lost confidence—it’s not because you’re a bad writer.

It’s because your current process is triggering all the systems that block creative flow.

And now your story dreams are in danger of staying stuck here and landing in your virtual pile of trunked novels. Meaning…

• You walk away from a nearly finished novel out of self-doubt
• You convince yourself you’ll “come back to it later”... and never do
• You rewrite the same chapters over and over, hoping to “feel better” about them
• You rush into revision that’s just surface-level tinkering with no clear direction

But you don’t need more willpower.

You need a process that’s built to support your brain through this phase of writing and the creative journey.

Build a Process That Works for You

This is where everything changes—not through brute force or more discipline, but by developing a process that supports the way your brain creates.

Because the authors I coach who finish their books consistently?

They’re not the ones with perfect outlines or endless time to write. They’re the ones who learn how to make writing work for them.

Here are four powerful ways to build a process that actually gets you to the end—and sets you up to keep writing book after book.

Strategy 1. Study Your Own Patterns

Start with the data you already have—your own experience.

If you’ve been tracking your writing sessions, which I recommend especially for this purpose, look back at your drafting log. What’s been working for you? When were you most productive? What threw you off?

Maybe you always stall out in scenes with emotional tension. Maybe drafting in the evening gives you better immersion than trying to squeeze in a session before work. Maybe you get stuck whenever music’s on—or maybe you need an instrumental-only playlist or certain sound bath frequencies to stay focused.

And once you know what works or what doesn’t, you can experiment. If you want to really get specific about what helps and what doesn’t, change just one thing at a time. Then give it a chance over several sessions so you can see what the more frequent outcome is.

This is important because there are tons of other variables that might make it seem like your new writing session change works one time and not the next.

For example, maybe you experiment with writing outdoors. But the first time you try, it’s on a day you were already extra tired. You don’t get much done and find yourself constantly distracted by things going on around you. So you think it doesn’t work, and you abandon that idea.

However, maybe what you didn’t know was that the next day, when you were better rested, being outside would have kept you more focused because you weren’t as likely to get up to go grab a snack, throw in a load of laundry, and otherwise take care of every little menial house task because it made you feel more productive than trying to work through a tricky scene in your draft that made writing temporarily slower.

So if you have data for this new change of writing outdoors over several days, you could see that while a couple days didn’t go so great, the majority of them worked better than being inside.

This kind of pattern tracking is more than helpful—it’s brain science.

Your brain’s executive control network is wired to recognize and optimize patterns. When you reflect on what’s working, you build a feedback loop that increases self-awareness, motivation, and follow-through.

And if you don’t have a drafting log yet? Start one. I have some further tips on creating a drafting log in this article. It doesn’t have to be complicated—just record each session, what you tried, what helped, and what didn’t.

You’re building a user manual for your creative process.

So here’s another tip:

Strategy 2. Create a Ritual or Writing Environment That Indicates Safety

Before you can enter flow, your brain has to feel safe. You need to get out of fight or flight.

So for that, I say any repeatable way you can get your limbic system and amygdala to take a back seat, the better for your writing sessions.

If you’re starting each writing session in a stressed-out, distracted state—your creativity’s already blocked.

So set up a cue—a ritual or environment that signals: this is where you get to create.

That might mean things we’ve all heard authors doing, such as:

• Lighting a candle or diffusing a scent that signals your writing time
• Putting on a focus playlist you only use when drafting

But a simple 60-second visualization where you picture the next moment in your scene can work too.

It not only helps to get your imagination going, it also does something neurologically powerful. By thinking through where you’re going each session, you’ll see yourself doing it—getting there. That alone can help you make it reality!

You know you can do it, and your brain is probably already working out how to get there.

Picture as much as you can. “Seeing” that you can get there will help give you the confidence to get there.

This practice doesn’t have to take a lot of time. But if you’re also using it to let your system move into a calmer state, maybe set a five-minute timer at the start of each session to get your mindset in the right place.

Organize your thoughts. Remind yourself of what the next piece of your story plan is. And visualize doing it!

Starting with the end in mind makes it easier to see the route forward than aimless wandering.

Train Your Brain to Respond to Creative Cues

Things like these and mindfulness practices in general can help you become more attuned to subtle shifts in relevance or importance, making it easier for the salience network to flag promising ideas.

This is the part of your brain that switches you between the executive control network and the default mode network—your daydreamer side.

So prompting your brain to practice daydreaming and alternating it with focused work can strengthen your cognitive flexibility.

I know there’s a lot of debate about how precious you should be about a writing routine—especially since we often don’t have the luxury to set up everything just so in order to write at all.

And we don’t want to take that to the extreme of not being able to get into a writing headspace unless everything is absolutely perfect.

But it seems exercising some of these little sensory or symbolic rituals and playing with different ones can train your brain to be more responsive to a wider range of cues, boosting your capacity for insight and creative breakthroughs.

You’re not just easing into writing. You’re exercising your brain to trust the space—and show up ready to create.

Strategy 3. Make Writing a Practice, Not a Habit

I don’t know about you, but habits are really hard for me. No matter how committed I start on that exercise plan, no matter how long I keep trying to reinforce the habit, I can drop it and all but forget about it at the first thing that throws me off track and doesn’t allow me to get it in that day. Poof. Gone! It’s the most disappointing magic trick ever.

But then why are there plenty of things I still do without having to consciously try so hard?

Like keeping my sourdough and kefir alive? And performing alchemy every morning to turn that kefir into a healthy breakfast shake? Even if I don’t take my cultures traveling with me every time, I go right back into that routine without fail.

So what’s the difference?

It turns out that it’s usually because these are the things that are simply a part of who I am. Which is apparently a hobbit.

And that makes them a resilient practice. Not a shaky habit.

You are not someone who writes. You are a writer. That’s who you are.

So repeat after me, “I am a writer. That’s who I am.”

Or do the slightly scarier thing and take it up another notch. You are an author. It’s who you are.

This is where the real transformation happens—not just in how you write, but how you see yourself as a writer.

Stop thinking of writing as something you do when you’re motivated.

Start seeing it as part of who you are.

That one shift—from habit to identity—is one of the most powerful ways to create a writing process that sticks.

Studies have shown that when behaviors are linked to personal identity, people are more likely to persist—even in the face of difficulty—because actions feel self-affirming and meaningful.

This model predicts that interpreting challenges as part of “who I am” increases resilience and motivation to return to the practice after setbacks.

When you say, “I am a writer,” it activates the medial prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain responsible for self-concept and personal value.

That makes your writing feel meaningful. Not just another task. Not something you’re trying to force through willpower. But something that reflects who you are and what matters to you.

This identity-based approach also engages your dopamine pathways, which support motivation and resilience—especially important for ADHD writers like me or anyone who struggles with consistency and habits due to differences in dopamine signaling and executive function.

Because habits can break. But your identity?

That can anchor you—even when life gets messy or your routine falls apart.

So How Do You Make Writing Part of Your Identity?

Well, dig deep into the reasons you write to get to the core of it.

But I’m not your therapist, so I’m going to give you something more accessible right now for the story you’re working on.

Start by reconnecting to your story’s “why.”

What emotional truth is at the heart of this novel? What’s its ley line that powers your whole story—the theme, question, or message you’re exploring through your characters?

It’s almost certainly the thing your character needs to learn by the end of the story.

My free Novel Premise mini course will help walk you through this in more detail. 

When you remember why this story matters to you, you reclaim the meaning that got you started in the first place.

And you activate the same intrinsic motivation networks that fuel your most creative, immersive work.

That’s what helps you bounce back from stalled momentum.

That’s what reminds you—this draft is worth finishing.

And that’s what keeps you going when inspiration fades, because your purpose hasn’t.

So if you’re in that late-draft slog, feeling stuck and doubting everything?

Don’t try to hustle harder.

Reconnect with who you are—and why you’re writing this story at all.

You Don’t Need More Willpower. You Need a Process that Supports You

You don’t need more willpower. You don’t need more discipline. And you definitely don’t need to feel like you’re failing just because you’re stuck.

What you do need is a creativity-friendly system that actually works—with your brain, your life, and your story goals.

In other words, you need structure, strategy, and support. (It’s always nice to have it in an alliteration!)

Getting unstuck and finishing your draft isn’t going to happen from pushing harder.

We default to that anyway, but that’s also why we end up in burnout.

What will actually help you finish is building a strong foundation from the start—one that you can rely on time and time again, even when life gets in the way. Like:

• Story craft and structures for planning, writing, and revising that give you direction
• Strategy that adapts to your creative patterns
• Supportive processes that help you bounce back from doubt or disruption
• Expert feedback that accelerates your progress and elevates the quality of your work
• And maybe most importantly: the confidence that your story is worth it—and that you’re capable of writing a book that readers will love

And, as always, it’s backed by the insights we have from brain science.

When you understand how story craft actually works—as reverse engineered from the reader experience and your own process of creativity—and you know how to apply those tools in your own story, you’re more likely to get into creative flow.

Mastery of core storytelling principles like:

• Structure
• Theme
• Character arc
• Internal and external balance on the page
• And the finer points like infusing it all with emotion your readers can feel

This depth of craft understanding and practice reduces your cognitive load and increases fluency. You stop agonizing about every story decision, and start writing with clarity, purpose, and momentum.

That’s why the authors I coach don’t just write more consistently—they level up the quality of their work while finishing their drafts.

Because I don’t believe in busy work, so it’s all taught with direct application to your story.

So if you’re ready to stop feeling stuck with your writing and seeing no progress with your story, don’t burn out in frustration or overwhelm.

Instead of abandoning your project, build a sustainable writing process you can return to again and again.

This is exactly what we do inside Enchant Your Readers, my book coaching program for science fiction and fantasy authors.

You don’t just get a framework for finishing your draft. You get a full coaching and editing experience—designed to support you, the writer, just as much as your story.

Inside the program, I’ll help you develop a personalized writing practice rooted in neuroscience-backed strategies.

• You’ll get my direct, unlimited feedback on your work
• Ongoing accountability to keep momentum going
• And a clear process that evolves with you—from messy first draft to marketable final manuscript

And through it all, you’ll build the kind of deep story craft mastery that makes your writing better—not just for this book, but for every book after.

So if you’re done feeling stuck, and you’re ready to build a writing process that actually works—you’ll find everything you need inside Enchant Your Readers. Join us inside this little sanctuary of the web that I love so, so much.

Categories: : creativity, novel drafting, novel planning, writer mindset