Why Writers Should Finish a Book Before Starting Over

Changing direction can bring a book back to life, but a restart has to lead somewhere. Writer Jeff Goins describes reworking a manuscript that no longer felt like his, and makes the case for finishing the new version with care.

Finishing makes another beginning possible

Goins likes the energy of a fresh start. He compares that appeal in part to autumn, when cooler nights and changing leaves make the season feel vivid and fleeting. New writing projects offer a similar charge: there’s room to discover what the work might become.

But the pleasure of beginning can obscure the effort of carrying a project through. Goins recalls a line from his friend Jon Acuff: “Starting is fun, but the future belongs to finishers.” For Goins, the point is practical as well as personal. Completing a project gives a writer a chance to learn from it and build confidence for the next one.

A pattern of constant restarts can leave a trail of unfinished work. Goins describes that accumulation as a cluttered life, full of projects that never become more than intentions. An incomplete manuscript may hold promise, but it hasn’t yet answered the basic question of what the writer is trying to make.

That’s why persistence matters. Goins says there’s little glamour in pushing through an old draft, but writers need to stay with a project long enough to understand it. Sometimes the work should be abandoned; sometimes an ending is the right choice. Still, if a writer repeatedly begins new projects without finishing, other people may hesitate to trust the next big idea.

A draft is where the book takes shape

For Goins, completing a draft has value even when the result needs to be scrapped. A writer can’t always tell what a book is while it’s still taking shape. The first draft, or perhaps the second, helps reveal which material belongs and what the project is actually saying.

A quarter, a third or even half of a manuscript may not yet offer that clarity. It’s work in progress, not a finished book. Moving words around and testing ideas is part of the process: writers discover the argument, stories and meaning through sustained attention to the material.

Goins contrasts this work with the apparent speed of producing a manuscript with AI. He argues that generating pages isn’t the same as deciding what should be in the book, wrestling with its ideas or finding the words the writer wants to stand behind. Those decisions take time and thought.

That doesn’t mean a writer should keep going at any cost. A project can become so unworkable that continuing the same way no longer makes sense. Goins suggests paying attention to a persistent feeling that the work is false or half-hearted. If the idea keeps nagging and each return to the keyboard feels like going through the motions, the writer faces a choice: finish the draft quickly or begin again.

His warning is simple: don’t make restarting a habit.

One major change to a book in progress

Goins reached that choice several weeks earlier, while his son played in an indoor soccer tournament. He was thinking about his book: what he wanted it to become and whether he could make that happen. The structure had been approved by the publisher, yet it felt out of step with the writer he is now. To him, it seemed like a book he might have written ten years ago.

Then a new direction came to him: tell the material as a story. The thought energized him, though he recognized that an exciting idea still has to prove it can work. Later, he shared it with his wife, whose judgment he trusts on creative decisions. She liked the idea.

The following weekend, at a retreat he had written about previously, Goins reshaped the book. He brought in a personal story he had written earlier, a piece of memoir that could serve as the manuscript’s backbone. The change made him nervous. It differed from what the publisher had agreed to, and he wasn’t sure it would succeed. It was also the approach he most wanted to try—and the one that frightened him.

He decided to take the risk. By the time he wrote this piece, he was about halfway through the revised manuscript. Each time he returned to it, he felt more excited. That renewed energy gave him reason to believe the change had potential, while the remaining work still lay ahead.

Trust the change, then see it through

Goins says experience has taught him that he gets only one such restart on a project before doubt and wavering take over. He takes a change in direction seriously and often advises clients against making one. For a first-time book writer, his guidance is usually to finish a book and learn what the process demands.

Yet sometimes a writer comes to recognize that the current plan no longer fits. In those moments, trust in a new direction has to be matched by the discipline to complete it. Goins closes with a reminder drawn from experience: a book, like a life, can withstand only so many restarts before it begins to fragment.

This is Part 6 in Goins’s series on writing a book. He says he plans to share more about the manuscript’s original structure and how he changed it, with a look at the pages themselves. For writers reconsidering a draft, the clearest takeaway is to treat a restart as a serious decision—and give the new version the sustained attention it needs.

Read the earlier piece about the retreat.

Subscribe now