Pacing Yourself: How to Finish a Novel

Today, The Guardian published a fascinating story about how Wyl Menmuir — a first-time novelist longlisted for the Booker Prize this year — used data about his writing productivity to keep himself motivated during the two-year emotional roller-coaster of writing his original manuscript.

Take a look at the article, it’s definitely worth the read:

How to finish a novel: tracking a book's progress from idea to completion

I love reading some of the positive self-talk that Menmuir uses to motivate himself through the challenging writing process:

It sounds a bit cheesy, but one of the big reasons I wrote the novel was so I could look my kids in the eye and say: “If you want to do something big and creative, make the time to do it.”

This whole article reminds me of my favorite features of Shaxpir: its ability to keep a daily tally of your writing productivity, recording the number of words you write each day, and the number of minutes you spend at the keyboard working at your manuscript:

It’s a lot like having a Fitbit for your writing life.

A Fitbit records your daily step-count as a way of tracking your overall activity level, so that you can get a better objective understanding of your fitness. When you can see the effects of your daily lifestyle changes, it motivates you to strive for continuous improvement every day.

Shaxpir does exactly the same thing for your writing life.

By recording your daily word-count, Shaxpir keeps you accountable for setting goals and making progress. You can finish your novel faster if you can see your progress unfolding in front of you, by doubling-down on your winning-streaks, and realizing quickly when you’re falling into the rabbit hole of writer’s block.

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Sign up for our latest release, Shaxpir 4: Everyone, which gives any author the power to brainstorm, outline, write, revise, and publish a complete novel or memoir. Track your writing progress every day, with free word-count and writing-time charts. For anyone, anywhere. For free, forever.