2025 Get Started Right Writing Challenge: Day 9

Get your writing goals started right in 2025 with the second ever Get Started Right Writing Challenge. The ninth day of this writing challenge involves thinking about the hardest part of writing.

For the ninth day of this challenge, share the hardest part of writing for you. Maybe you don't feel you have enough time, or there are too many distractions keeping you from writing. Perhaps, you have too many ideas...or not enough. It's possible getting started is the hardest part, or coming back to your writing afterward.

Of course, it's also possible that writing isn't even the hardest part of writing for you. Maybe it's submitting your writing or figuring out query letters or something else completely. Give it a think and share with the group in the comments below.

Just a quick note: If you leave URLs for your handles in the comments below, they'll likely be caught by our spam filters, but don't hold back. I'll be checking regularly on Monday and Tuesday to manually approve such comments.

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Here is what the hardest part of writing is for me:

Honestly, the hardest part of writing for me is staying focused on one idea. This is probably why I really excel at shorter form writing, whether it's poetry or online content, but I can't ever seem to finish up my novel, which keeps taking different directions with a clown car cast of colorful characters (who aren't clowns).

Maybe I should spend a little more time outlining so that I have a roadmap for getting from the beginning to the end on my novel. Or maybe I should just let my process do what it's going to do. Either way, I'd have to say focusing on one idea is my biggest hurdle.

Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.