Wouldn’t it be nice if you could simply sit down with your laptop or notebook and write your novel from beginning to end without any problems? Imagine waking up every morning with excitement to get a few more pages down and every week seeing the pages add up and the book coming together as easy as creating a favorite dish in your kitchen.

Have all the right ingredients? Check.

Have the oven on? Check.

Have the time to prepare it? Check.

When it comes to cooking, you’ve done it a hundred times and this time will be no different. You can already see the dish coming out of the oven and you know the pleased responses you will get when you set it on the table for dinner.

Just imagine what it would be to write a novel like that?

Have a good plot? Check.

Have time to write every day? Check.

Know exactly what you are going to do and how to do it? Check.

So what is the big difference? Why are you not on your 10th and 15th novel by now? Why are you still struggling with everything?

Perhaps there is more mindset to this game of writing than meets the eye.

Maybe you are thinking too much and doing too little.

After all when it comes to cooking you simply do it. Sure, you might have a few fumbles with a new recipe but it never stops you from getting something on the table every night. With this thought in mind, here are 7 mistakes that may be stopping you up from whipping up your next, juicy novel!

1. Thinking your book has to be perfect the first time.

2. Not starting because you don’t know where to start.

3. Quitting because the project seems too big, too hard and too complicated.

4. Stopping because you had no idea it would be this much work!

5. Hating everything you write and hating everything you write…

6. Feeling you were and are stupid to ever think you could write a novel! For heaven’s sake, what were you thinking?

7. Giving in. Giving up. Quitting.

Lucky for you there are ways to get rid of this mental crud very easily.

Apply these quick and easy remedies to each of the negative lemons and start drinking another cold, refreshing glass of lemonade. Your novel will get done. It will be the best you can make it. And when you are done with the first one, you will start on the second and the third and the fourth. You are a writer and nothing will stop you.

Let’s go!

1. Celebrate that your book does not have to be perfect to be wonderful! Think of it is as your first born. No matter how red, wrinkled and scrunched up looking that first triumphant finished book is, nothing is going to stop you from keeping it and acknowledging it as your own. You may have other books, better books, but this is your first and worth loving.

2. You don’t have to know where to start to start. Start anywhere and you are on your way. Write the end first if you want. Write what comes easy and flows. Keep writing.

3. No quitting. Simple as that. Don’t allow that option. It’s up to you to throw in the towel or not. Just refuse to do it. The book doesn’t have to be Shakespeare but for your own good it does have to be done. Lots of writers write first books that never get published. But they had to write that first one. So do you. Don’t quit.

4. Of course it’s a lot of work! But prop yourself up with visions of how wonderful it will be to actually be a published writer. Everything looks like a lot of work if you look at the whole project from start to finish. Instead, break it up into small enough, day-sized pieces and it’s doable.

5. Okay, on this one I can’t say that you will love everything you write, but I do know that as writers, we are not good judges of our own work, especially in the beginning. I do know that every day that we write we get better. It’s a learned skill and it does improve with practice and perseverance.

6. Of course you are not stupid! You are brave and wonderful to follow a dream and make it come true. When it comes to being a writer, it is up to you to make that dream come true. If you are a spiritual person pray about it and ask God or the Universe or whatever power above you that you can connect with to help you fan your talent into its most perfect state.

7. Same as # 2. Just don’t do it. Adapt, refocus, switch gears a bit, but don’t quit. Just keep at it and it will happen. The magic happens when we stay around long enough for it to germinate and grow!