How to Overcome the Halfway Slump When Writing a Book

Often, writers start to feel a slump in their book when they get to about halfway, depending on how easily (or not!) your words are flowing onto their screen. This is a common time to feel a bit demotivated. Why is that?

As professionals, we love to get things done. While some book coaches will promise you a finished book in 48 hours/one week/one month, the true writing of a book is a process of self-reflection. Anyone can put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) for an extended period of time, churning out book after book. However, the quality of those books may be questionable. If this is your first book, it is extremely important that your book be of a high quality, because once it enters the market, it is there forever. And as they say, first impressions matter!

A great way to stay motivated is to imagine the deep sense of accomplishment that you will feel once your book is complete. More importantly, the deep sense of satisfaction that you will feel when you receive positive reviews and feedback.

At this stage of your journey, take the time to take a step back and reflect. Even though you are may be halfway, it is not too late to change the focus of your book, or to add something new. Now is the time to make a big change, if you choose to do so.

It is advisable to involve yourself in a process of observation. Take out an hour or so and answer some questions about your book. For example, are you happy with the focus of your book? Is there anything missing from your themes? What have you thought of over the past few weeks, that you may have left out of your book? What do you want the end product to look like? What do you want the end product to feel like? In other words, what do you want your reader to feel when they read your book? This emotional question will start to spark some neurons in your brain.

If there are changes that you want to start making to your book, begin incorporating them into the work that you have already done. At this stage, you may have other existing writing/content that you want to add to what you have already created for your book (for example, seminar notes or talks). Now is the time to begin incorporating this information.

So, how long do you want your book to be? This is a major question that pops up at this time in your journey. How much information should you share? How much should you hold back? Should you write another book with the outstanding information? Should you incorporate it all in one book?

These are questions that you need to answer before the second half of your writing journey. A common length for non-fictional books is between approximately 180 and 250 pages. However, some books are certainly shorter or longer, depending on the writer and the topic. For hard copies, caveats to this include the size of your book and the font size.

Publishers go by words and not by pages. To determine how many words you have per page, it depends on the type and size font you are using. In general, there are 250 – 300 words per page. Therefore a 40 000-word book should be about 145 manuscript pages.

Keep in mind that this is your creative work, and it should not be limited to page numbers. Anything between 25 000 and 40 000 words for a business-related or self-development book is ideal, while a novel should generally have at least 40 000 words.