Hello, friends!

Complacency is a phenomenon anyone with a completed draft can identify with. After finishing a draft of your manuscript, it becomes very easy to tell yourself you’ve done enough and you deserve a break for a little while. Whenever you consider writing, you convince yourself you don’t need to because you’re done with an entire draft! You’ve done so much already, it’s alright if you just open Netflix instead and close out that blank Word document you were going to use to plan your next masterpiece.

I’m here to tell you: don’t.

I know the lure of laziness and the “I’ve earned a break” routine. But the thing is, I haven’t. I only finished my manuscript because of hours of writing. And that’s what writers do. Writers write. I haven’t done anything special that gives me permission to slack. And while I can certainly be proud that I finished a draft, I won’t be a writer anymore if I don’t keep up with my craft. And I won’t be able to edit what I have or start anything new or ever feel that sense of accomplishment again if I don’t write and earn it.

Don’t get complacent. Always keep working, keep earning that feeling of success.  When you start to experience that suggestion of “I don’t have to right now”, don’t listen to it! Even if all you do is come up with one character name or a single sentence, it’s better to keep your brain fresh and exercised than to let it give up time and time again. Write. Grow. Learn.

Have you experienced post-novel complacency? How do you deal with it? Leave a comment and let me know! If you have any requests or suggestions, you’re welcome to leave those as well. Feel free to like and follow me for more writing shenanigans.

Thanks for reading!

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us get up and go to work.

-Stephen King