Meaningless Drivel,  The Writer's Life

21 Excuses for Why Your Novel Isn’t Finished Yet

November 17, 2010 /

Yes, it’s a list-based post. If you prefer something more esoteric, read this post instead.

1. My protagonist has locked himself in his room and won’t come out until I agree to give him a love interest who isn’t sleeping with his best friend.

2. This computer can’t read WordPerfect files. Okay, so it’s been a while since I last worked on my novel. Don’t judge.

3. My muse left me to go work for James Patterson.

4. It is finished, but I’m waiting until novels about glittery vampires are “in” again before submitting it to agents.

5. Is true art ever really finished?

6. The letter “e” doesn’t work on my laptop. Try typing “The End” without it.

7. I’m still trying to make the first paragraph perfect. You know, for my query.

8. I can’t remember the filename.

9. Have you seen this newfangled thing called The Internet?

10. I’ve used up all the words in my thesaurus.

11. I don’t have a deadline.

12. I do have a deadline and it’s yesterday.

13. I’ve fallen in love with the delete key.

14. I have a needy spouse/child/pet/neurosis.

15. Carpal tunnel syndrome. Or leprosy. One of those.

16. Not enough monkeys.

17. Not enough Xanax.

18. Someone else wrote it already so I have to start over. Damn you Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky!

19. My mom says I have to clean up my room first.

20. I died years ago and the executors of my estate haven’t decided yet which of my kin will pretend to be me for the next few decades.

21. My novel? Oh, it’s all right here in my head. I just haven’t written it down yet. But it’s gonna be brilliant!

Feel free to use any of these, royalty-free. Or add your own in the comments.

Then get back to writing.

14 Comments

    • Steve P., ND

      November 18, 2010 at 12:41 pm

      You’re welcome. Oh, and that file name? It’s probably something like stephenkinghasnothingonme.txt or somedayiwillberichandfamous.doc or most likely latestversion.dotx.

      You’re welcome again.

  • katdish

    November 18, 2010 at 9:33 am

    Yeah, #21.

    Also? I’d rather bitch and moan about how no one publishes anything of literary integrity instead of trying to write anything of literary integrity. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go troll some literary agent websites and leave some scathing anonymous comments.

    • Steve P., ND

      November 18, 2010 at 12:44 pm

      Just make sure your scathing anonymous comments about the sorry state of literary fiction are littered with misspellings and grammatical errors and generally poorly written. Because that would be ironic.

  • hillary l.

    November 18, 2010 at 2:02 pm

    I’m protesting NaNoWriMo.

    My protagonist and I are in couples’ therapy.

    I don’t want to go too far in before the publishing committee comes back and tells me they want me to add two subplots and subtract one…

  • Thérèse

    November 19, 2010 at 11:03 am

    You probably suspect this, but I am going to tell you anyway that you are funny, and I laughed at your list. I also laughed at your replies to comments. I don’t have anything to contribute to this list, but I do want you to know those two things. Obviously.

    Thanks for the lovely encouragement!

  • Thérèse

    November 19, 2010 at 11:10 am

    Okay wait. I have reconsidered, and would like to contribute the following to your list.

    – I lost my dictionary and have a deep distrust for the spellcheck ever since it failed to catch “thungs” as a typo for “things” and instead my protagonist informed her boss that she had some “thongs” to sort out.

    – I also resent the spellcheck for being funnier and more clever than I am.

    – I am distracted by research. By reading other people’s lovely novels and stories and blogs and articles and yes it is too research.

    – YouTube. Stupid related videos.