When You Can't Finish the Book

Another question I was asked recently was what to do if you can’t finish the book. The questioner said something about how she knew she was “supposed” to soldier through and get to the end, but she just hadn’t been able to do it.
I said that there were usually 2 reasons that people couldn’t finish a book.
1. Life block, which means that you have stuff going on in your real life that is preventing you from having the emotional energy to deal with story problems. Some writers write even during the worst possible life crap. Most writers don’t. There’s nothing wrong with having real life impinge on your writing. It happens. Deal with your real life crap and then you’ll be able to write again.
2. The book is crap. Sorry! I know this sounds rude. But at some point your subconscious (the course of most creative first-draft ideas) may refuse to work on a book because it knows that there is something deeply, deeply wrong with the book. Until you figure out what the problem with the book is, you’re not going to be able to keep writing. So go back to the beginning and see where you went wrong. Amputate the stinking, gangrenous part, and then you may find you can keep going.
There are writers who seem to start a book and then get bored, start another book and then get bored again, and on and on. These writers may have 20 beginnings of books and wonder what is wrong with them that they can’t finish a book.
I will say again, I don’t think the problem is that you need to just plow through and finish a book that’s crappy, though I hear that advice fairly often. If you keep starting books and not being able to finish them, there’s definitely something wrong, but it’s not necessarily that you don’t have stamina. You may need to try outlining. You may go wrong fairly early on. You may need to sit down and analyze a book that is absolutely gripping from beginning to end and see what you need to do to copy that.
Just because you start twenty books and don’t finish them does not mean that you will never finish a book actually. You may just need to hit on the right idea and then you will find that you have no problem finishing a book.