i guess my question is how do you continue to find energy and drive to write such long pieces? like i've got a lot of ideas that i want to make happen, but when i think abt the length of them, and my track record trying to finish longer stuff, i get kinda discouraged?
I mean the answer is that often times I donât - if you look at my work just on AO3, youâll find at least a half-dozen abandoned WIPs, and some of them are pretty long by the time I abandoned them. I think honestly the key is: donât beat  yourself up about the stories you donât finish, and try your best to finish the next one. And donât be afraid to come back and finish stuff later; Iâve been writing a regency Hobbit fic for like three years now (not kidding), and I donât consider that abandoned - Iâll finish it sooner or later, because I love the story.
As for finishing: in the past itâs been really helpful for me to write a last scene and use it as my end goal. By the time I get to the final scene, Iâll have to completely rewrite it, but knowing that there is a final scene already out there is helpful for me. But I donât know anyone else who does this, so it might not be useful as general advice. Setting yourself a goal of writing X words per day is a good one, because even if theyâre x number of crappy words at least you wrote something, and editing for me is always preferable to writing. I myself donât have the self-discipline to write X words per day, but it helps a lot of other people.