Overwhelmed With Your Writing? Lower Your Scope

As many of you know I’ve been stuck on book 3s. Everyone loves to think that writing books gets easier with each one. To some extent this is definitely true, but as a wise man once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” And I think this relates perfectly with this situation. As you gain more writing powers, more problems will arise because you’re leveling up to a new level. And every level comes with its own set of problems and responsibilities.

The problem I’ve been facing with writing the third book in my fantasy series and the third book of my poetry series has been feeling way too overwhelmed writing them. I thought maybe I wasn’t excited about the stories anymore. That maybe it was the stress from going through a big life change. And I’m sure these played a part in feeling overwhelmed. But the ultimate answer dawned on me just the other month.

These books were WAY TOO BIG!

For years I’ve been set on the fact that my fantasy series would be a trilogy. That this last book was the final one, no matter how long this book was, I’m telling the entire ending right here, right now. But when I finished National Novel Writing Month at the end of November, 70,000 words deep after only writing half of my point of view characters, and haven’t even come close to the ultimate ending for them, I realized that I had a monster of a book in my hands and that this book was actually going to be 2 books.

As soon as that thought dawned on me, a calmness flooded through my body. I no longer felt overwhelmed. And this is because I lowered the scope of the book, narrowing down my focus to a smaller range, making it much easier to work with this 1,000 page document.

The same thing happened with the third book in my poetry series. This book focused on poems of False Acceptance, Moving On, and Change, with a total of 250 poems. This was already double the length of the first poetry book. I knew I had to cut stuff down, but every time I read through it, my brain didn’t know what to focus on. It just knew something, SOMETHING was off. 

And then the answer presented itself while I was tossing and turning in bed. It told me to separate this into 2 books! As soon as this crossed my mind I knew it was the ultimate answer to this problem. And yes, it was a glorious answer.

The Change section didn’t fit in with the vibe of this overall poetry series that focused on broken relationships. Luckily there were enough poems in Change to fill an entire book itself. So I decided to separate Change from False Acceptance and Moving On, and what do you know, the book practically finished itself after making this decision. And ending the entire series on Moving On gave me SHIVERS!

So, if you’re feeling overwhelmed with your book, maybe it’s time to take a step back and see what you’re actually working with. You may actually be writing 2 or 3 books in 1 without even realizing it. And the best part is, if you separate a book into 2 books, you make more money 😉 Yay!

Have you been thinking about writing a book and don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’re an experienced writer who has felt stuck and overwhelmed with a writing project? I’d be happy to talk it out with you over a FREE Discovery Call.