But “I’m out of ideas” is something you can deal with in a lot of ways besides “write through the block.” In fact, brainstorming and plot-noodling are probably much more efficient ways of handling that particular problem, because by the time you’re that far into a book or story, you don’t exactly need new ideas – you’re building on what you’ve already said and the things that have already happened.

And if you already have a complete draft, and you are “out of ideas” – is the problem perhaps that it’s actually DONE? That it’s time to move on to something completely NEW, and start submitting the one that’s finished?

I’ve finished a few drafts of this thing, which began as some sort of half-baked pseudo-fanfiction mesh way back in 7th grade. I worked on it on and off through high school and college, where 25 page papers on the roots of american slavery really killed the creativity, so I would stay involved by creating backstory, like geneologies and stuff. I’m also deeply emotionally attached because it got me through high school. Some kids start cutting themselves to deal with problems; I wrote. Only in the past year or so have I really beaten into Real Novel shape and taken out the parts where I’m figuring out life issues. Now, er, I don’t really have an excuse besides “I’m out of ideas,” to which you would reply, “just write through the block.” To which my response would most likely be a petulant whine and, “But its HARD!”

For everyday once November is over, if over-revising really is the problem, I suggest trying the thing where you simply refuse to allow yourself to do ANY revisions until you have a complete first draft. If it doesn’t work, then you can try various other things to find a balance between the two extremes (constant revision while trying to move forward vs. no revising allowed until it’s finished).

I think I’m going to use the rest of your question for another blog post because I can get really long when I start talking about stuff like that…

My question: So pretend you’ve spent so much time on something that you’ve got gobs and gobs of backstory and little trivial details, like the MC is terminally left handed or her brother has to organize his pens in a very specific way or their uncle won the very first US Open. These things have nothing to do with the plot but add humanizing quirks to the characters that would make them so much more interesting in real life. How do you find the balance of details without hitting overload?