Writers are exceptionally good at telling stories, and not all of them end up in our books.
The Stories Writers Tell Themselves is a limited audio series by novelist Katherine Collette about the stories writers make up about rejection, comparison, success, failure and what everything means, and what happens when we start to see those stories a little differently.
Ten stories, plus a bonus walking meditation for writers. Listen from the beginning or start with the story that sounds most like yours.
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Episode 5 - I never finish anything
Writers spend a lot of time making up stories and not all of them end up in our books.
The Stories Writers Tell Themselves is a free limited audio series about the stories writers make up about rejection, comparison, success, failure and what everything means, and what happens when we start to see those stories a little differently.
Start with the story that sounds most like yours, or begin at Episode 1.
I'm Katherine Collette, a novelist. I write books for children and adults.
I also help other writers write their books.
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Join the waitlist to be the first to hear about ways to work with me when I open them up again
Hi, I'm Catherine Collette. Welcome back to the stories writers tell themselves. Today's story in this episode is I never finish anything. Maybe the version in your head sounds like this: I start projects but I don't ever complete them, or I lose momentum halfway through, or the harshest version of all, I'm lazy, undisciplined, and just not cut out for this. This story can feel like self-awareness, but most of the time it isn't. Most of the time, it's a misdiagnosis. Because when you look closely at what's happening in a stalled project, the issue is rarely a fixed character flaw. More often, it's that the way you're trying to write isn't working. It's a practical problem, and you are treating it like a personality flaw. Once you see this story clearly, it starts to lose some of its power. Now, there are a few common forces that tend to create the I never finish anything pattern. The first is perfectionism. Halfway through writing a novel or memoir, you begin to see the gap between the book you imagined when you started and the messy, somewhat underwhelming reality of your first draft. Instead of adjusting expectations and recognizing that early drafts are supposed to be rough, your brain jumps to a very harsh conclusion. This isn't working, the idea is flawed, and there's absolutely no point continuing. What's happening here is that you've reached the stage where the initial momentum of an idea has run out and you have to start figuring things out. The story doesn't arrive as easily, and you have to make choices about structure and about characters and about what actually belongs in the book. This stage can feel like the project is breaking down, when in reality it's when the real work of writing begins. The second driver behind the I Never Finish Anything story is discomfort, avoidance. Writing asks you to tolerate uncertainty and confusion and the long middle, where the initial excitement of an idea has faded but the book is nowhere near finished. Almost every creative project passes through this stage, but it's not a stage our brains particularly enjoy. We tend to prefer tasks where progress feels obvious and completion is close. When writing starts to feel difficult or uncertain, the mind begins looking for alternatives that feel easier to finish. Suddenly, researching obscure historical details seems essential. Reorganizing your notes feels productive. You disappear down a rabbit hole of smaller tasks that offer the satisfaction of completion, while the larger, more uncomfortable work of the book waits. The third driver behind the I Never Finish Anything story is fear of visibility. As long as a project remains unfinished, it can stay excellent in theory. The unwritten novel can still be brilliant. The half-finished memoir could still become something remarkable. Once you finish the draft, however, the work becomes real and it can be read and judged and it may fall short of the original vision. Leaving something half done allows the imagined version of the project to remain intact. Finally, there is the practical question of structure and support. We often assume that discipline should come naturally, but for most writers it's engineered. Willpower is unreliable and easily depleted. What actually helps people to finish large creative projects are the conditions around work. When you write, how you write, what expectations you hold for early drafts, and whether anyone else is expecting pages from you. When you believe the story I never finish anything, the damage is not just that projects stall, it's that over time it erodes trust in yourself. Each unfinished draft becomes evidence that you cannot follow through. And instead of questioning the setup when you're writing how you're writing what support you have, you begin to question your character. The question to ask is not what is wrong with me, it's what is making this harder than it needs to be. Sometimes the biggest obstacle might simply be a mismatch between time and energy. You may have carved out time to write in your day, but perhaps it's happening when your brain is already exhausted. Writing at nine o'clock at night after a full day of work or looking after kids or whatever can make creative thinking extremely difficult. Rearranging the structure of your day so writing happens earlier, leaving lower energy tasks like emails or admin or cleaning for later can completely change the experience of the work. Of course there are limits to how much you can do this. I've written in lunch breaks at work, I've written while my kids were in crish at the gym, and I've tolerated a very messy house so I could clean later, in theory. Sometimes it's less about finding more time and more about protecting the moments when your brain is actually capable of creative work. Don't give something that matters a lot the worst of you. Sometimes what makes finishing hard is uncertainty about what happens next in your story. When you're not sure where the plot is heading, it becomes harder to sit down and continue. If that's your problem, even a rough plan for the next few scenes, not the whole book, can make the work feel more manageable. Sometimes the missing ingredient, what is stopping you finishing, is just a lack of accountability. No one cares if you do or don't finish. When someone expects pages from you, like if you have a writing coach waiting for the next 10,000 words, people discover they are far more capable of consistency than they previously thought. What looks like a motivation problem is often just friction. Reduce the friction and you start to build momentum. Often what helps is not suddenly developing heroic levels of discipline, but simply changing your expectations, like lowering the bar for a writing session, allowing your first draft to be really not very good. Maybe you need to write the scenes that feel alive, even if that means writing them out of order. Or adjusting the rhythm of your week so that writing occasionally receives the best of your energy, rather than what is left at the end of the day. Finishing a book has way less to do with becoming a more disciplined person than people think. It has more to do with building a structure that makes returning to the work possible tomorrow. When writers say I never finish anything, what they often mean is the way I'm trying to write isn't working. That is not a personality flaw, it is a design problem. And design problems can be solved. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, I'd love you to share it with another writer. And if you didn't enjoy it, perhaps recommend it to an enemy. Happy writing!
