Process Over Product: The Mindset Shift that Can Save Your Novel
Author Karin Adams shares a powerful reframing strategy for writers stuck in the pressure of perfection. In her blog post, she reveals how shifting your focus from product to process can boost creativity, ease writer’s block, and restore joy to your writing life. With relatable examples and actionable advice, Karin shows how even small steps—like refining a character or writing just 500 words—can keep your novel moving forward.
When we first start writing a novel, many of us daydream about its completion. It’s fun (and natural) to imagine your unwritten story as a thick, glossy book with a gorgeous cover proudly displayed on a bookstore shelf.
The trouble arises when we can’t stop thinking about our story as a finished product. That same exciting, glossy, gorgeous volume begins to taunt us whenever we sit down to write. Our thoughts start to run like this: Where do I start? I can barely think of three sentences to write today. How many sentences does my finished novel need? Ugh! This is hopeless—there’s so far to go! I might as well give up.
Please don’t! In my experience, the solution lies in a simple but powerful mindset shift— don’t focus on the written product, focus on the writing process. By process, I mean the stages you go through, the steps you take, and the strategies you employ as you write a novel-length story. Suddenly, your attention shifts to much more reasonable goals and actions, and each one presents an opportunity for creative expression—and success! That’s a lot more energizing than a brain that’s haunting you with the spectre of one giant, unfinished project that’s impossible to complete in a single writing session!
Let’s look at some further benefits a process-over-product mindset can offer to you as a writer.
Helps in Establishing a Regular Writing Rhythm
When you’re focused on the big gap between your current manuscript and the finished novel, you can get overwhelmed. It’s enough to make your words dry up. You might even avoid working on your story altogether because it feels so daunting. But when you approach writing as a process, you’re more likely to stick to a regular writing practice. Your immediate task is never to “write a novel”, it’s to finish that scene in Chapter Four, or write 500 words, or write for half an hour. These are the kinds of goals you can reasonably achieve each day. You’re not finishing your story, but you’re moving it forward—and you’re much more likely to show up and do it again tomorrow.
Sharpens Your Focus and Purpose
The writing process encompasses so much more than just the finished novel. It can involve everything from developing characters to building your story’s world to sorting out possibilities for your best ending on a storyboard…and more. When we value these steps and stages—and not just the end-product—we’re more likely to truly give ourselves the time and space to imagine and play. We’re more likely to focus on what needs our creative attention, thus enriching the stories we’re weaving.
Makes it Easier to Troubleshoot Problems
When you think of writing as a product, any snags you encounter have a way of blowing out of proportion—it can feel like something’s wrong with you as a writer, and therefore your entire draft must be doomed! Instead, when you accept that writing is a process—something with steps and stages—it can help you to zero in on where the problem originates. Did I rush through the character development stage? (Maybe I should spend time refining backstory!) Is my daily word count target too ambitious? (Maybe I should bring it down and see if that gets me back in a rhythm.) A flawed product is disheartening, but a process can be tweaked and adjusted.
Helps You Overcome Blocks
A process-over-product mindset can help you to deal more effectively with creative blocks. A stubborn block that prevents you from completing your book can feel like the end of your creative road. With a process mindset, we can divert our energy temporarily to another step or stage. Maybe we choose to write a different scene or go back and clean up a rough bit of dialogue from Chapter Five. Keeping creatively active instead of banging our heads against that same immovable block has a way of generating momentum and ingenuity, letting us come back to the trouble spot and push right through.
Increases Creative Joy
Leading up to the moment we share our finished book with others are hours, days, months or more filled with writing moments. By valuing the process, you can savor each of these moments, too. Relish achieving your daily word count for the eighth day in a row. Marvel at how you came up with an ingenious plot twist. Celebrate that golden dialogue exchange. Bask in the delight of being utterly lost in your story’s world. These moments within the process are worthy of celebration, and when we let ourselves truly enjoy them, they form the basis of the creative drive to keep going.
Enjoy your daydream of novel completion but do keep it in its proper place. It’s helpful as your North Star, but not as an impossible-to-complete item on your daily to-do list! Today is about your next step. Savor the experience and count each step you take with your story as its own creative victory.
About the Author
Karin Adams is an author and creative writing coach who has been teaching fiction writing in workshops since 2010. Her writing guide The One Week Writing Workshop:7 Days to Spark, Boost or Revive Your Novel has won multiple book awards and was the Gold Award Winner for Writing/Publishing in the 2024-2025 Reader Views Reviewer’s Choice Awards.
Karin regularly shares fiction writing tips on social media and posts writing craft articles at www.authorinyourcorner. As a mentor to writers, she sees herself as a guide sharing her own experiences in order to provide fellow writers with strategies and support. She takes a process-centered approach believing that writers of all stripes can find common ground when talking about “the creative how” even when they differ in “the creative what”.
Karin is also the author of five middle grade novels, including Frostbite Hotel, shortlisted for both the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award and SYRCA’s Diamond Willow Award.
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