5 Signs Your Writing Process Is Broken (And How to Fix It)

If you've been working on your novel for months (or years) without making real progress, I want you to know something: it's probably not a talent problem. More than likely, it’s a process problem. 

And the good news about process problems? They're fixable.

Today I'm sharing five signs that your writing process is broken—not to make you feel bad, but to help you finally understand why you've been stuck. These signs might look like separate issues, but they all trace back to the same root cause. And once you see what that root cause is, you'll know exactly how to fix it.

Sign #1: You’ve started multiple books but never finished one.

Your hard drive is a graveyard of half-finished manuscripts. And if we're being honest? Each one started with so much excitement.

A shiny new idea. That rush of possibility. You sat down thinking, this time will be different. This is the one I'm actually going to finish.

But somewhere around the 20,000 or 30,000-word mark, the momentum disappeared. The story got complicated. You weren't sure what happened next. The scenes you were writing felt disconnected from where you started, and you couldn't quite figure out how to bridge the gap. So you slowed down. Maybe you took a break to "think things through."

And then, almost on cue, another idea showed up—fresher, easier, more exciting. You thought, maybe that one is the book I'm meant to write.

So you started again. And the cycle repeated.

So why does this keep happening? Here's the thing—new ideas are easy because they're all potential. You haven't hit the hard parts yet. But every story gets hard at some point, and without a roadmap to guide you through the messy middle, abandoning ship will always feel easier than staying the course. The problem isn't that you haven't found the right idea. It's that you don't have a process to push through difficulty when it arrives.

Sign #2: You sit down to write and don’t know what to work on.

You've carved out time to write. Maybe you protected this hour fiercely—woke up early, said no to plans, put your phone in another room. You open your document, hands on the keyboard, ready to go.

And then... nothing.

Should you work on chapter three? Go back and fix that scene from last week that's been nagging at you? Skip ahead to the part you're actually excited about? Maybe you should re-read everything you've written so far, just to get back into the flow of things.

So you scroll. You tinker. You read. You convince yourself this is productive.

And before you know it, your writing time is gone—spent on indecision instead of actual writing. You close your laptop feeling frustrated, maybe even a little ashamed. You had the time. Why couldn't you use it?

So what's going on here? You don't have a roadmap for your story. Without knowing the key scenes you're building toward, every writing session becomes a question mark. You're not building momentum—you're just showing up and hoping inspiration strikes. And when you don't know what to work on, you often default to the only thing that feels safe: going back to the beginning.

Sign #3: You keep rewriting the same chapters instead of moving forward

You've written your opening scene five times. Maybe ten. Each version is a little different, a little better—or at least you hope it's better. But you still haven't made it past chapter three.

Part of you knows you should move forward. You've read the advice. "Don't edit as you go." "Give yourself permission to write badly." But another part of you whispers that you can't build on a shaky foundation. That if the beginning isn't right, nothing that follows will work either.

So you stay stuck in the early chapters, polishing and tweaking, convincing yourself that if you can just get the opening right, the rest will finally flow.

But it never does, does it? Because this isn't really revision. It's procrastination disguised as perfectionism—and it keeps you trapped in a loop where your novel never actually gets written.

So why do we do this? When you don't know where your story is going, the beginning feels like the only "safe" place to work. You're not confident enough in your story's direction to move forward, so you stay where you are—rewriting the same chapters over and over, hoping clarity will come. But clarity doesn't come from polishing. It comes from knowing your destination.

Sign #4: You've written yourself into corners you can’t get out of

You were making progress. Real progress. The words were flowing, the story was taking shape, and for once, you actually felt like a writer.

And then you hit a wall.

Maybe your character made a choice that now makes the rest of your plot impossible. Maybe you wrote yourself into a scene that you have no idea how to get out of. Maybe you realized halfway through that your villain's motivation makes no sense—and fixing it would mean unraveling everything you've already written.

Now you're stuck, staring at a manuscript that felt so promising just a few weeks ago, wondering if you should just scrap it and start over. Again.

So why does this happen? Usually, it's because you started drafting before you understood the full shape of your story. And I get it—you were excited, the idea was fresh, and you wanted to capture that momentum while you had it. But without knowing how the pieces connect, it's easy to write scenes that feel right in the moment but don't actually lead anywhere. And once you've written yourself into a corner, the only options feel like backtracking or abandoning the project entirely.

Sign #5: You know how your story starts, but have no idea how it ends

You have a killer opening scene. Maybe even a great first act. You know your protagonist, you know the world, you know the inciting incident that kicks everything off.

But if someone asked you, "How does it end?"—you'd have nothing. Or maybe you'd have something vague. A feeling. A general direction. But not a real, concrete ending you're writing toward.

You might tell yourself that's okay. That you're a "pantser" who discovers the story through writing. That the ending will reveal itself when you get there.

But deep down, you know the truth: you've been stuck for a while now. And the reason you're stuck is because you don't actually know where you're going. You're driving without a map, hoping you'll end up somewhere good—but secretly worried you're just going in circles.

So what's really happening here? Many writers mistake "having an idea" for "having a story." But an idea is just a starting point. A story needs a destination—an ending that everything else builds toward. Without it, you can't make confident decisions about your plot, your characters, or your scenes. You're just wandering, waiting for the story to tell you what it wants to be. And that's an exhausting way to write.

The Real Problem Behind All 5 Signs

So here's what I want you to notice: every single one of these signs points to the same root cause.

The abandoned drafts. The freezing up. The endless rewriting. The corners you can't escape. The missing ending. They're not five separate problems—they're five symptoms of one deeper issue.

Your process is broken because you're trying to draft a novel without a solid foundation for your story.

Let me explain what I mean by that.

The full journey from idea to published book has multiple phases—writing, editing, publishing. But if we zoom into just the writing phase, there's a sequence that matters.

If I were coaching you through this process, I wouldn't have you jump straight into outlining or drafting. I'd have you slow down and work through the foundational pieces first—your protagonist, your antagonist, your theme, your central conflict, your plot structure.

These foundational elements aren't separate things. 

They're all connected, and they all play off each other. Your antagonist drives the external conflict. That external conflict puts pressure on your protagonist, which drives their internal conflict. Your theme shapes your character's arc. Your character's arc determines your plot. When one of those pieces is off, it throws everything else out of alignment—and you usually don't realize it until you're 20,000 words in, wondering why nothing feels right.

But when you develop these pieces together before you start outlining, something kind of magical happens. They start to reinforce each other. Your protagonist's wound connects to your theme. Your antagonist challenges your protagonist in exactly the right way. Your plot structure gives that internal journey somewhere to go. The story starts to feel inevitable instead of forced.

Then, when you outline your scenes, you can see the shape of your whole story before you've written a single draft page. You catch the plot holes. You spot where the character arc isn't landing. You notice that your antagonist disappears for five chapters. You fix all of that before you've invested months in a broken draft.

And then when you sit down to write, you're not guessing anymore. You're building on something solid.

So why doesn't everyone do this?

Most writers want to skip straight to the drafting. And I get it—that's the exciting part. That's where you feel like a "real writer." But when you skip the development work or rush through it, every part of the process that follows becomes harder. You can't draft with confidence if you don't know where your story is going. You can't revise effectively if you're still figuring out the fundamentals of your plot and characters.

The symptoms show up later—in your drafting sessions, in your revision cycles, in the manuscripts you eventually abandon. But the breakdown happened earlier, when the foundation wasn't properly built.

And here's the good news: when you fix the foundation, you fix the process. These problems don't just become easier to handle—most of them stop happening altogether.

What This Looks Like in Practice

I want to paint a picture for you, because I think it helps to see what's possible on the other side of this.

When you build a solid story foundation before you draft, everything changes.

Instead of staring at a blank page, wondering what to write, you open your document and know exactly what scene comes next. You're not guessing. You're not hoping inspiration strikes. You're executing a plan—and that feels completely different.

Instead of rewriting chapter one for the tenth time, you trust your story's direction and keep moving forward. You know you can refine things in revision, because you're confident the bones of your story are solid.

Instead of writing yourself into corners, you see potential plot problems coming before you get there. Because you understand how the pieces connect, you can course-correct early—before you've written 30,000 words in the wrong direction.

Instead of abandoning your story when it gets hard—and it will get hard, that's just part of writing—you have a path through the difficulty. A roadmap that shows you where you're headed, even when the writing feels uncertain.

And instead of wondering how your story ends? You know. You're building toward something specific. Every scene has a purpose because you understand how it fits into the whole.

That's the difference between a broken process and one that actually gets you to "The End."

Your Next Step

If you recognized yourself in any of these signs—and if you're being honest with yourself, I'm guessing at least one or two hit close to home—here's what I want you to do.

Stop blaming yourself. Seriously. This isn't a talent problem, and it's not a motivation problem. It's a process problem. And process problems are fixable.

Instead, start looking at your foundation.

Ask yourself honestly: Do I have a solid foundation for my story? Do I know my key scenes—the major turning points, including how it ends? Or am I trying to draft my way to clarity, hoping the story will reveal itself as I write?

If the answer is no foundation—or a shaky one at best—that's your fix. Not more willpower. Not more writing sprints. Not another new idea to chase. You need to develop your story first. To build that foundation so that drafting becomes focused instead of chaotic.

And if you want help doing that, my Notes to Novel course walks you step-by-step through the entire process—developing your story idea, building your cast of characters, and creating a roadmap for your entire novel. So you can draft with confidence instead of confusion. Click here to join the waitlist and be first to know when enrollment opens!