Thursday, February 21, 2008

Moving Forward

Whew.

I just updated all the side links--somehow, harder than it should have been. There are a lot of sites I've been visiting for a while in Google Reader that I just hadn't added to the list. (And oddly, considering that I had an issue with all the people entering my contest having names that begin with "J", I added 5 fellow writers to my sidebar, and 4 of them have J names. What is up? Am I drawn to J people?) Anyway, hope you enjoy. There's some wonderful stuff over there, almost daily.

In the past couple of days, I found myself drawing on a piece of advice Vicki gave me a long time ago.* It's one of those things I keep forgetting. Since it has been endlessly useful for me, I'll share it here:

Don't hold anything back for later in the book, or later in the series, or for another book. If you have a great idea, dump it in NOW. Another great idea will come in later for the next bit.

Even though I KNEW this, I was still holding onto a little tidbit, a plot direction, thinking it needed to wait for later. But I couldn't figure out what needed to happen now. And then I banged myself upside the head with this advice, threw the complication in without worrying about saving anything for later, and yup. It worked. Now I'm off on a whole new tangent, and I'm feeling the confidence again. Woo-hoo!

*See, Vicki? I gave you credit without prompting this time!

3 comments:

Vicki Pettersson said...

{smack upside the head}
Dumb@ss.

Just kidding.
Sorta.

But _always_ happy to help. {s}

Susan Adrian said...

Vic:

It only takes me 10 or 11 times before these things stick. {sigh}

Tell me again about the "creating your own positive reality" one. You know, making -- up with your mind. {g}

Julianne Douglas said...

Susan,

Thanks for adding me to your blog list!

J #5