And when you're trying to juggle plot and prose and theme and character all at once, you're doing this as well. You're trying to write a finished, polished, layered novel in one single draft. And the reason that this does not work is because again, writing a novel is not a linear process. It is an iterative process in which you make decisions, you test those decisions, you see what works, you adjust, and then you build on what's strong, you fix what is weak, and you clarify what is muddy. But you can only do that if you have something to work with, and that something is a complete draft. Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo, and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming. So each week I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable, and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started. In today's episode, I'm sharing three powerful mindset shifts that every writer needs to make in order to finish their drafts. Whether you're just starting out with your very first story idea or have a folder full of unfinished drafts, these shifts are the key to writing forward and finishing your first draft with confidence. And I wanted to tackle this topic today because if you're like most of the writers I talk to, you probably have a handful of opening chapters collecting digital dust in a folder on your computer, or you have three different versions of chapter one, or maybe you have an outline that felt great for about a week and then suddenly didn't feel right anymore. Or maybe you keep getting to the same spot in your story, usually somewhere around the first act or the beginning of the middle of your story, and then everything starts to slow down and fall apart. If any of these scenarios sound familiar, I want you to know you're not alone. These are some of the most common patterns I see with writers, especially those who are embarking on their first draft. And when you find yourself stuck in situations like this, it's so easy to make these situations mean something about you. So it's really easy to think something like, well, if I were really a writer, I would have finished my draft by now. Or other people seem to get this figured out. Maybe I just don't have what it takes, right? It's really easy to go into those mindset spirals. So before we go any further, and before I share the three mindset shifts with you, I want to say this as clearly as I can. You are not the problem. Your talent is not the problem. What usually needs to change is just the way you're thinking about the drafting process, which is what we're going to talk about in this episode. So today I'm going to walk you through three mindset shifts that will help you write forward instead of writing in circles. And these are the exact mindset shifts I've watched transform stuck and frustrated writers into people who actually finish their books. So if you have a folder full of abandoned drafts or if you're already worried that you're going to stall out again on your most current project, then grab a pen, because we're going to dig into what's really going on beneath the surface and what to do instead. So without further ado, let's dive right into mindset shift number one. The first mindset shift that I want you to make that will help you get to the end of your draft is to embrace progress over perfection. Now you've probably heard me say this on the podcast before, but your first draft only has one job, and that is to exist. Its only job is to help you get your ideas out of your head and onto the page. But most writers don't treat their first drafts this way. What ends up happening is they write chapter one, they read it back, they don't like it, and so they revise it. Then a few days pass and they end up revising it again. Maybe they change the opening paragraph or they rewrite the first couple of lines, maybe they even tweak the dialogue or do another pass on the prose, whatever it is, and then at some point they feel okay enough to move on to the next chapter. But as soon as they move forward, the pattern pops up again. So they get a few pages in, that critical voice pops up and says the whole thing's terrible, it's not good enough yet, and so they go back and fix it and maybe even go back to chapter one before making any further progress forward. If you can relate to this, I want you to know it's very common. And I think this instinct comes from a really good place. It means you care about your story, you want it to be the best it can be, and you want what's on the page to match the vision that's in your head. And there is nothing wrong with that. That's a great goal. So the problem is not that you care this deeply about your story. It's where you're putting that care in the process. And what I mean by that is when you keep looping over your opening chapters, trying to get them perfect, you're trying to perfect your story before you even know what the whole thing looks like. And because you don't know what the whole thing looks like, you're not going to know what's important or not important, or what revisions actually matter versus which ones don't. So you really do need a whole story, beginning, middle, and end, before you can see what's working, what's missing, and what needs to change. One of my notes to novel students, Jenny, is a really good example of this. So she spent, I think it was 12 years caught in this cycle of writing a few chapters, deciding they weren't good enough, and starting over again and again and again. She cared so much about getting it right that she couldn't move forward until her opening chapters felt strong. But what finally changed for Jenny is embracing this mindset shift of progress over perfection. So she gave herself permission to write a messy draft all the way through. And guess what happened? She finished the whole thing in six months. Was it perfect? No, of course not, because no first drafts ever are, but it was a real draft, and once it was real, then she could finally see what her story was really about, what was already working, and what needed to improve. So that clarity that she'd been chasing for over a decade came after she finished her draft, not from perfecting those opening chapters. So the first mindset shift I want you to embrace is the idea of progress over perfection, forward movement before beautiful prose. I want you to get the story down first and then worry about making it good later. And if it helps to have language for this, you can literally say to yourself, I am not writing my full completed book today. I am just sitting down to discover my story. I am writing my draft today. I think this helps because there's a big difference between discovering your story or working on your draft compared to writing a book. Writing a book sounds very official and like it has to come out perfect, right? The draft is just the raw material, so it doesn't need to be impressive or fancy or anything like that. It just needs to exist. Okay, so that is the first mindset shift I'd encourage you to make. I want you to embrace progress over perfection. And now let's move on to the second mindset shift because it connects very closely to this first one. And so the second mindset shift I want you to embrace is action over analysis. Now I have a few slightly uncomfortable questions to ask you. Number one, how many writing craft books do you own right now on your bookshelf? You don't need to count to get an exact number, but just take a peek or think about your Kindle. How many writing craft books do you have? Question two, how many podcasts about writing have you downloaded on your phone? How many episodes do you have in your download folder that you're waiting to listen to someday? Question number three, how many writing-related workshops or writing courses have you taken this year? Again, you don't have to come up with a perfect number. I just want you to think about that. Now, last question, how many words did you write last week? If you're cringing right now, you are not alone. When you're someone who cares deeply about writing a book and you want to get it right, it can feel really productive to keep learning, to get one more craft book, or learn one more plotting method, or do one more bit of preparation before you're really ready to start. On the surface, all of this feels productive, right? You're learning about story structure and character arcs and themes and how to write a scene. You're underlining things and taking notes. And all of that can be useful to an extent. Obviously, I love talking about the craft of writing. I do it all the time on this podcast, but there is something to be said about getting stuck in that analysis or in that learning mode. And really what it boils down to is this all of that studying or information gathering is really just fear in disguise. So it's a way to stay safe from the messy, vulnerable act of putting words on the page. And I know hearing me say that probably stings a little. It's probably not what you wanted to hear today, but it is the truth. And to bring this to life, I want to tell you about one of my notes to novel students who spent about 10 years in this cycle. So she would write a few chapters, her progress would stall, and then she would go and consume more writing advice. And she genuinely wanted to understand story structure and how to plot a novel before she began because she thought that was her biggest problem. She thought that that's why she would only ever get a few chapters in and then her story would kind of stall out. So she absorbed everything she could find on story structure podcasts, craft books, she went to writing workshops, you name it. But every time she came back to her draft, she still felt lost. And when I hear stories like this, I'm like, of course you felt lost, right? Because reading about writing and actually writing are not really the same skill. It's kind of like trying to learn how to swim by only reading about swimming. That wouldn't work, right? At some point you have to get in the water. And when you get in the water, it's going to feel awkward and splashy and imperfect, no matter how many books you read about having the perfect butterfly stroke, right? So back to my notes to novel student. Her name is Liz. When she finally made this shift out of analysis and into action, it's not like she stopped learning completely. What she did was just flip the ratio. So she decided that her default going forward would be doing, not researching. And one of the first actions she took was creating a very simple scene-by-scene outline. So it was nothing fancy, it was just a list of what happens in what order from beginning to end. And she let that outline be a starting point for her, not a contract. So it was a flexible outline that she updated as she got to know her story more. And then she committed to showing up to her draft three days a week, even if she didn't feel ready. So she stopped telling herself she had to understand everything there was to know about structure before she started writing. Instead, it was more like, I'm gonna learn what I need to learn by writing my way through it and making mistakes. And that's exactly what happened. The momentum that she had been looking for after chasing down different craft knowledge for 10 years, it didn't come from any book or workshop. It came from putting words on the page and being willing to learn as she was doing the work. So if you recognize yourself in this story, then the mindset shift I want you to make is all about getting into action over analysis. And another way to think about this is that courage comes before confidence. So you are not going to feel perfectly ready before you start writing. Confidence is something that grows because you've taken action and you've gotten familiar with what you're doing. It's not something that you wait for or have before you start taking action. All right, so a practical way to apply this mindset shift is that for the next week, I want you to give yourself a simple writing commitment that feels doable even on a busy day. That might be sitting down and writing for 15 minutes, it might be writing 300 words, it might be finishing a scene. However, you define that is fine. And when your brain says maybe I should just watch a plotting video first, or maybe I should listen to that podcast or read that chapter in a craft book, I want you to gently push that thought aside and just focus on getting into action. And if you do this, then over time you're going to start feeling your relationship with writing shift. You'll go from feeling like someone who is always preparing to write or waiting to write to someone who is actually in the middle of a draft. And that identity shift is a huge part of finishing a novel. Okay, so that is the second mindset shift I want you to embrace. I want you to choose action over analysis. All right, now the third mindset shift I want you to embrace is I want you to trust the layered nature of storytelling. And this one's really important because one of the biggest sources of overwhelm I see is when writers try to do everything all at once in their first draft. So they're thinking about plot and their prose and the character development and the world building and their theme and the pacing and the subplots and the symbolism and all of that stuff at the same time on the sentence level, at the page level, at the scene level, at the act level, and all the way up to the global story level. If you're resonating with this, then of course you feel overwhelmed, right? That is way too much for any brain to hold at one time. And so what I want you to do is I want you to imagine that you're building a house. If you were building a house, you would not be picking out paint colors while you're still digging the foundation. You wouldn't be stressing about crown molding before you even have your walls put up. And you would definitely not be agonizing over which pillows to put on the couch before you even have a roof, right? There is a natural order to that process. You build the foundation first, then you do the framing, then you put up the walls and the roof, and then you do all the finishes, and then comes the decoration. So I tell you this because writing a novel works in the exact same way. Your favorite novels were not built in one perfect pass. Instead, they were built in layers. So I want you to think about it like this. Layer one is your foundation. This is where you figure out those core elements of your story. So things like what genre you're writing in, who is your protagonist, what do they want and why, what's the central conflict they're going to face and what's your antagonist all about? What are those big plot points or turning points that you know you want to hit and you know things like that. So at this stage, it's not about writing pages and pages of polished prose, right? It's all about discovering the story you actually want to tell and making sure those foundational elements all work together. All right, and then after that in layer two, this is where structure comes into play. So once you have that foundation built, you can start mapping out how the story is going to unfold from beginning to end. For you, that might look like a detailed outline or it might be a little bit of a looser list of key scenes to guide you. It doesn't really matter what that looks like, but the key thing about this stage is that you're making decisions about the order of events and the cause and effect between different events. So one scene happens, which leads to the next scene, which complicates the scene after that, which forces this big decision, you know, stuff like that. All right, and then after that, in layer three, this is where you're actually writing each of your scenes. And the beautiful thing is that when you've done all that foundation and structure work in layers one and two, you're not just wandering around on the page word vomiting up things, hoping it all comes together. And that's because you have a roadmap. So you know why your protagonist is doing what they're doing, you know what they want, you know who's getting in their way, you know what each scene is building toward, and you have something to measure all your creative decisions against. All right, so again, stories are built in layers, not in one perfect pass. And to bring this to life, I want to tell you about one of my notes to novel students, Julia. So she came into the program after years of trying to juggle all of these elements at the same time. So she would draft a scene, and then she would go back and revise the prose, revise the character arc, and tweak some world building details and make sure her word count was on track and things like that, all at the same time. And so she felt like she was constantly rewriting the first half of her book and never reaching the end. And she felt like that because it was basically true, right? And so the turning point for Julia came when she heard me talk about this idea of stories being built in layers. And so she went back to building out the foundation of her story first. She clarified her character's want and need, she nailed down the central conflict, she got really clear on her story's big plot points, and then she built a simple scene-by-scaling, and only then did she go back to drafting. And once she did, she stopped trying to make all the sentences in her pages beautiful, and she stopped worrying about her theme being profound and her world being perfectly detailed all at the same time. She knew she was going to have time to do that later, and so she let herself focus on doing one primary job per layer. And the result was that she finished her first draft in four months. So four months after years of being stuck in the same place. And again, this isn't because she suddenly became more talented or got an MFA or anything like that. It's all because she stopped expecting one draft or one pass to do the job of five. And the best part is that she was so much happier with both her draft and her writing process because she wasn't trying to juggle everything at once. So the key point here is that when you trust this kind of layered approach, the overwhelm disappears. You know exactly what to focus on at each stage, you stop second-guessing every decision because you understand where you're at in the process and what your story needs right now. And then the path from idea to finish draft becomes a whole lot more clear. All right, so to put this mindset shift into practice this week, I just want you to consider where you're at in the process right now or what layer are you in. If you're in that foundation layer, then your job is not to write perfect scenes. Your job is to ask those foundational questions like who is this story about? What do they want? What gets in their way? What changes, what are readers going to expect from a story like yours, and things like that. If you're in that second layer where it's time to worry about structure and plot and things like that, then your job is not to write perfect or polished sentences. Your job is to make sure that there is a clear cause and effect throughout your entire story from scene to scene, right? You're structuring those ideas you came up with in the foundational layer and turning them into an actual plot. Now, if you're in the drafting layer, then your only job is to get the story down on paper. And remember, this is all going to be based on decisions you've already made in the foundation layer or in the structure layer. And when you're here, you can trust that there's gonna be time later to refine your language, deepen your theme, adjust the details, and things like that. So again, the more that you can think about your story as being built in layers, the less pressure you're gonna put on yourself and your draft to carry the entire weight of the book all at once. All right, so that is the third mindset shift I want you to make. I want you to embrace the layered nature of storytelling. Now, let me pull all of this together because I want to make sure the through line of this episode is clear. All three of these mindset shifts that we talked about today are actually addressing the same core problem, just from different angles. And that core problem is that most writers are trying to write their final book on their first pass. So when you loop endlessly on chapter one, this is what you're doing. You're trying to make it final book quality before you know what the final book actually needs to be. And when you stay in learning mode instead of writing mode, you're doing this as well. So you're trying to understand everything perfectly before you allow yourself to make mistakes on the page. And when you're trying to juggle plot and prose and theme and character all at once, you're doing this as well. You're trying to write a finished, polished, layered novel in one single draft. And the reason that this does not work is because again, writing a novel is not a linear process. It is an iterative process in which you make decisions, you test those decisions, you see what works, you adjust, and then you build on what's strong, you fix what is weak, and you clarify what is muddy. But you can only do that if you have something to work with, and that something is a complete draft. So when I say progress over perfection, I'm really saying give yourself permission to write an imperfect version of your story so you can see what you're actually working with. When I say action over analysis, I'm really saying trust that the answers you're looking for will come from doing the work, not from consuming more content about the work. And when I say trust the layered nature of storytelling, I'm really saying you don't need to have it all figured out at once. You really can focus on one job at a time and let each layer inform the next. All right, now I know it can be tempting to hear an episode like this and think, okay, I need to put all of these mindset shifts into practice at once. But I don't want you to do that because that's just another version of overwhelm. Instead, I want you to just pick one of these mindset shifts, whichever one hit you in the gut the most, and focus on that for the next week. So if perfectionism is your biggest challenge, then I want you to push yourself to write forward without editing as you go. Set a small goal like five scenes or a certain number of words, and promise yourself you will not go back to revise those pages until you hit that goal. If you're someone who tends to live in learning mode, then set a boundary around your craft consumption. Maybe that looks like no craft books during your writing hour, or for every podcast episode you listen to, you're gonna write for at least 20 minutes. If you're someone who feels like you're trying to juggle everything at once, then give yourself permission to step back into that first foundational layer. So spend a few days just getting clear on your protagonist, their goal, their obstacles, and the core shape of your story. And then let that work support your next drafting session instead of trying to reverse engineer it on the fly. The point here is not to become a perfect writer overnight, because remember, perfect writers don't exist. The point is more about starting to relate to the drafting process in a way that's actually going to help you get to the end of your draft. All right, now one last thing before I let you go. If you've been listening to this episode today and you're like, man, I really need help putting some of this stuff into practice so I can finish my novel, then I want to let you know that my notes to novel course is opening up for enrollment very soon. And in that course, I walk you through the exact layered approach I talked about today, from building a strong foundation for your story to mapping out your structure to drafting your novel in a way that feels focused and manageable instead of overwhelming. So if you've been stuck in a cycle of false starts or half-finished drafts, and if you want support, accountability, and a proven framework to follow, I would love to invite you to join the Notes to Novel wait list. When you're on the wait list, you'll be the first to know when doors open again, and you'll also get some extra fun behind the scenes resources to help you start thinking about your story this way even before the program begins. You can add your name to the wait list by going to Savannah Gilbo.com forward slash wait list or clicking the link in the show notes, and I'll make sure you're the first to hear when enrollment opens. So one more time, that's Savannah Gilbo.com forward slash waitlist. Alright, so that's it for this episode of the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast. Head over to Savannah Gilbo.com forward slash podcast for the complete show notes, including the resources I mentioned today, as well as bonus materials to help you implement what you've learned. And if you're ready to get more personalized guidance for your specific writing stage, whether you're just starting out, stuck somewhere in the middle of a draft, drowning in revisions, or getting ready to publish, take my free 30-second quiz at savannaGilbo.com forward slash quiz. You'll get a customized podcast playlist that'll meet you right where you're at and help you get to your next big milestone. Last but not least, make sure to follow this podcast in your podcast player of choice because I'll be back next week with another episode full of actionable tips, tools, and strategies to help you become a better writer. Until then, happy writing.