By Daphne James Huff

It’s taken me almost seven years and over a dozen published books to realize one very simple thing:

You don’t have to use it all.

Sounds simple, but it’s been a long road to get there!

What’s taken me the longest to accept is that you don’t have to use all of the ideas that you get. Every spark does not need to become a full-length novel.

This is particularly hard for indies. It feels amazing to see your ideas become books and have people read them, without being held up by the glacial pace of publishing houses. Why wouldn’t you want to do that for every single idea that comes along?

Unfortunately, the publish fast mentality of indies simply doesn’t leave time for projects outside the books you’re set to release that year. The ideas you start putting onto the page have to become books you can sell, or that’s time and money lost.

What honestly helped me the most with this was moving into a job that paid more, relieving a lot of the financial pressure I’d been putting on writing. That was in 2019. Then it was 2020 and writing and priorities drastically changed for everyone.

Fast forward to 2024 and I have “cut scenes” documents that are nearly as long as the books themselves. I have a folder full of “writing ideas” that I know may never become more. I play around with different kinds of stories outside the genre I usually write in. I queried a book (and wrote a sequel for it) that will probably never be published.

Giving myself the time and space for “useless” ideas has also led to going deep on learning craft, even though you don’t have to use all of the techniques that you learn.

I think that first craft book or class can be absolutely life changing for a writer. You’re learning the magician’s tricks, you’re pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. And you probably use most if not all of what you learn, because you need it all.

Then time goes by and you develop and grow, and you start using only bits and pieces of new writing knowledge. Eventually you realize that a lot of books and classes repeat the same things, just in new ways.

Sometimes it can be fun to try a new way, but sometimes it’s scary, because what if it means the way you’ve been doing it this whole time has been wrong? (Spoiler: you’re never doing it wrong, because whatever works for you to finish a book is the right way for you).

Then there’s the stuff that just doesn’t make sense. I took a scene structure class last summer from my favorite editors. I love their teaching style, and every other class I’ve taken gave me some new, incredible superpower I didn’t know I had.

Scene structure, no matter how many times I reread the slides and watch the videos, remains a mystery.

Do I need to understand and master scene structure to write my next book? Of course not. It’s entirely possible I’m doing it already and for whatever reason my brain just doesn’t organize it the way these two amazing editors do. Or it’s something that will click once I learn some other piece of craft. Or it will never click, and that’s fine too.

I’ll never know it all, but I know enough to let each book develop the way it needs to. I put all I can into each project, but I don’t put in everything. There’s always another idea, another book, another chance. If you try to use it all, then there’ll be nothing left for next time.

Daphne James Huff has been writing for adult and YA audiences since she was a young adult herself. Her kissing-only contemporary romances always have relatable struggles for the couple and plenty of lovable side characters. Daphne works in HR during the day and fills the rare nights she’s not writing by reading, baking, and hanging out with her husband, son, and cats. Follow her on Instagram @daphnejameshuff  and at daphnejameshuff.com.

Stay updated on her latest releases (and get a free short story!): https://dl.bookfunnel.com/5tz9l3lz1q

Photo by sheri silver on Unsplash