How To Achieve The Maximum By Focusing On The Minimum

I’ve given up greatness and look for MVPs.

Photo by Maria Eduarda Loura Magalhães Tavares from Pexels

I feel how uneven my breathing is as my fingers hover over the keyboard, unable to keep typing, and it only makes me panic more.

I’m writing my second novel, and my only goal is to complete it. Nothing else. I’ve given up greatness and embraced humility. I had to after I rewrote my first book about a million times and at the end scrapped it for it had become an ugly, unreadable monster.

One of the reasons it came to that was having too many choices. I’d start to edit, and all possibilities would scream at me at the same time.

Create suspense. Have surprising twists. End all chapters on a cliff-hanger. It would be better if you didn’t tell the story chronologically. Are you making the best of your POV? Remember, characters drive plot. Also, characters don’t control everything that happens to them. That would be unrealistic.

I was as helpless as a spider’s victim, all wrapped up in a web of the best storytelling practices. Then the spider ate me; me and my dreams.

Warren Buffet famously told his pilot to circle the top 5 of his 25 life goals and focus on them — because it’s better to have 5 completed goals than 25 half-completed goals.