Have you ever started plotting out a draft, story, dream journal and found yourself with too complex and heavy of an idea meshed with dozens of other ideas that make you go, “Man, this needs to be an entire series!” But then you start, and the idea of creating no only one book for a story idea but three, four, or even five and you’re feeling heart palpitations every time you sit at the keyboard. That anxiety is unnecessary, and what is the rule for unnecessary items in a draft?

You cut that mess out. Or draw a red line through it. Whatever your preference.

There’s nothing wrong with realizing your tree has so many branches coming out that it’s basically a huge tumbleweed. If you can handle that, hey, amazing! If not, that’s fine and human. It’s more than okay to say “this is too much, I can’t do this whole thing.” So let’s start with the basics, huh?

A personal example is this:

I’ve been developing a storyline for a novel but I was having issues with two characters: the protagonists’ (a twin brother and sister) parents. I knew they would be divorced and somehow abrasively different than each other, but I became so agitated with them. Like, how are you two so different? How’d you manage to get married? I didn’t want the children to be premarital (nothing wrong with that, it just didn’t click well with my story), but the parents were frustrating. SO frustrating that my want to write the story at all has been lacking…like dead on arrival lacking.

So I’m doing it Disney-style and just straight up and killing the parents off. The grandmother, a character I love and aim to be when I grow old, will be the parent, and the parents can be a bittersweet memory of the normalcy that the two teenagers could have had as opposed to the insane misadventures about to befall them.

Now? I’m eager. Wonderfully eager to get home and write this story. Some writers will plot forever, plan out each characters’ quips and actions.

I’m more of a “jump into the deep end and see what swirls around me” type of writer.

And that’s okay. But first? I have to start with the begining simple steps before the plunge.

Wish me luck and good luck to all of those pursuing NaNoWriMo!!!

I can’t say I’m in the race any longer, but I do want to write, so that counts!

I hope to keep you all updated on my next book…which, I don’t have a title for as of yet. I really think I know what it is but like other things, it may get killed off, too!

Until then, keep reading and writing, friends! Have a great weekend!

Love,

A. Rose