You either finish the book or work for the man forever: Why you MUST complete your novel.

Hey, congratulations to me for the blog's tenth post!

Now then, on to business.

Every writer has that dream of one day opening up their email and seeing a message from a publisher or literary agent in which an offer has been made on your book. What a glorious day to know that you can finally shrug off the shackles of your mind-melting 9 to 5 day job and write for a living! As you sit at your computer and contemplate just who will play the protagonist in the feature film that will surely follow, you reach for the phone so you can eloquently and politely tell your boss just where he can put the job you have hated all these many years.

It would be nice, right?

Well, there's just one issue. Before that even has a chance of happening, and most of us know all too well that the likelihood of ever being published is remote at best, you have to do something that sets you above and apart from all of the other writers paddling wildly through the ocean of procrastination.

You have to finish your book.

Many of you just threw your hands up and yelled at your keyboards. Some of you may have threw up on your keyboards and yelled at your hands. I suppose you were expecting that I would reveal some great, mysterious secret that would get you instant publication and have you on a private jet to NYC to sign the contract before dinner. But, my friends, I'm afraid there is no secret.

In order to have someone publish your book, you have to have a book to publish.

That little fact is what stares a lot of writers in the face daily. It scowls at them and occasionally curses them in French. My novel has been 60% complete for over a year now, and every day that slips by that I do not progress it any further is another day that the prospect of writing for a living becomes dimmer.

Now, I know what you will say. "I'll find another paid writing job. I'll take up blogging and immediately have thirty thousand dollars a month in Adsense revenue."

"I'll copy-write and soon be giving away the hundreds of Ferraris I'll have accumulated."

"I'll just switch over to screenwriting and knock out an Oscar winning screenplay in a week or two and you can kiss my tuckus as Spielberg and I drink espresso."

None of those things will ever happen. At least not that easily. And I don't think Spielberg drinks espressos anyway.

The reason you will never truly excel in any other avenue of writing is because your novel, your book, your passion, will be incomplete. It will haunt you and eat away at you. You cannot run from it.

That's why you need to finish it.

So whatever it is you were planning on doing after you read this, cancel it. Open up your book and write at least a page. Then tomorrow write two. The day after that, see if you can do three. And so on.

And don't forget to call me from NYC when you get there. ;)

Until next time, keep those keyboards warm.

-John