There’s a particular type of person who will, upon hearing you’re a writer, say, I have a book inside me. They’ll say it with the kind of certainty that suggests it’s a fully formed thing, waiting patiently for its moment. They don’t say they want to write a book. They say they have one. As if it already exists, trapped in their chest like some mythical creature waiting to be released.
Except—most of these people will never write it. Not because they don’t have the time, or the ability, or the discipline, but because the unwritten book is often more appealing than the reality of writing one. The idea of having a book is infinitely more satisfying than the work it takes to actually create one.
So why do so many people believe they have a novel inside them? And what stops them from ever letting it out?
The Fantasy of Writing vs. The Reality of It
1. The Idea of Being a Writer is More Romantic Than Writing Itself
For some people, the dream isn’t to write—it’s to have written. The unwritten novel is a kind of personal mythology, a story they tell themselves about what they could do, given the right circumstances. But the reality of writing is messy. It’s long hours spent alone, battling self-doubt, trudging through revisions, questioning whether the book is any good.
An unwritten book never has to go through that. It remains pristine, unblemished by bad prose or plot holes. It doesn’t require failure, because it doesn’t require effort. It exists in the mind as something already finished, even though it’s never actually started.
👉 This is why so many people talk about their novel like a certainty—but never sit down to write it. The moment they try, the illusion shatters.
2. The Fear of Discovering It’s Not as Good as They Think
An unwritten book is always perfect. It has the potential to be brilliant, to be a masterpiece. But the second someone starts writing, it becomes something else—it becomes real. And real books are never as clean, as effortless, as the ones in our heads.
This is why so many people start and stop within the first few pages. They expect it to feel as good as it did in their imagination, and when it doesn’t, they assume something has gone wrong. The book they imagined was better than this awkward, stumbling draft.
But that’s because ideas are easy. Execution is hard.
👉 The people who actually finish books aren’t the ones with the best ideas—they’re the ones willing to see the idea through its ugly, disappointing first drafts.
The Psychological Need to Believe There’s a Book Inside Us
There’s something deeply human about wanting to believe we contain more than what we’ve done so far. The idea that we have a book inside us is reassuring—it suggests we’re full of untapped potential, that we’re capable of something great, even if we’ve never actually attempted it.
But if the book is never written, it can never be judged. It can never fail. And so, it remains in a state of permanent possibility, where it can always be the great thing we believe it is.
This is why some people cling to the idea of an unwritten book for decades—because letting go of it means admitting that maybe, they weren’t going to write it after all.
How to Tell If You’re Someone Who Will Actually Finish a Novel
The people who say they have a book inside them tend to fall into two categories:
- Those who love the idea of writing, but not the reality. They enjoy the identity of being “someone who could write a book,” but when they sit down to do it, they realize they don’t actually want to go through the process.
- Those who love stories enough to do the work. They might struggle. They might hate their drafts. But they’ll keep going, because the act of writing itself is what drives them, not just the idea of having written.
👉 If you only want to write a book because it sounds impressive, you probably won’t finish one. But if you’re willing to wrestle with bad sentences, with self-doubt, with drafts that don’t quite work—then you’re already ahead of most people who say they “have a book inside them.”
Because the difference between someone who could write a book and someone who actually does?
One of them sits down and writes. The other keeps talking about it.
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