Robert Heinlein wrote his five rules of writing in an article back in 1947.

  • You must write
  • You must finish what you write
  • Refrain from rewriting
  • Put your story on the market
  • Keep it on the market until it sells

Individually, they sound simple. Following them all and consistently is the challenge. There are many reasons, or excuses, for not finishing a story. The main one is when your own head gets in the way, and that happened to me this past week, although if I’m honest, it’s been building for two or three weeks.

Earlier this month, I published a novella and put a banner on the cover that said Book One of the trilogy. Stupid of me because that made book two Important, and I have struggled with the story ever since. And let’s not even talk about book three!

Except book two isn’t really important. It’s just another story, and if I’m following Heinlein’s Rules, I have to finish the story.

Well yes, but maybe not finish today or this week. I came across a technique I’m setting up that should help with this. The technique is to go on to a new project. Something that’s exciting and I want to write (plenty of those running around my head), and spend maybe eighty percent of my writing time on that new project. The other twenty percent goes to book two.

Maybe it’s only fifty or a hundred words that get written each day on book two. Maybe it’s a thousand. Either way I’m making progress and whether it’s December or next March, I’ve made the commitment to my creative voice that I will finish the story.

Now I can let creative voice go and play and know I’m keeping to Heinlein’s second rule.