“It’s a mystery,” I replied as if the answer to her question was obvious. “She wants to find the killer.” (The “duh” was implied.)
I am ashamed to admit that it took more than that one book to understand what she meant. Oh, sure, I quickly latched on to a fear of failure, and how my character was afraid to not succeed. And that carried me through a book or two, while my character succeeded in exposing the killer but failed at life, learning that failure was sometimes necessary for growth. It’s not a bad lesson to learn, but after a few books, it turns out, our readers actually want to see our characters succeed at life too!
Think about it. Life throws daily challenges at us. Some we win, and some we…keep trying to win. We only give up on the things that aren’t important enough to keep us motivated. But when there’s something we want—which may, by the way, be finishing our manuscript or to losing ten pounds or finally understanding how to style our naturally curly hair (ahem)—that motivation works like a fresh battery to keep us plowing forward even when things get tough.
Ever get a great idea, something you just know will change your life? You just need to learn how build a bookcase/make fresh bread/change your sparkplugs/cut your own hair/become fluent in French/join a professional society/exercise for an hour each day. And you start out with the best of intentions, you buy the best supplies/ingredients, you pay your dues, you sign up for Duolingo. You sandwich your new habit between existing ones like James Clear suggests in Atomic Habits. You stick to your new routine because it’s important.
Until one day, it’s not.
Your bookcase is partially built, you’ve been feeding sourdough starter for a month the only thing you make is a sourdough pancake. Your hair is lopsided, and you still don’t know the difference between savoir and connaître. It’s not because you’re lazy, or too old to learn, or the principles of chemistry chose to boycott your sourdough starter, it’s because you lost your motivation. None of these things mattered enough to power you toward your ultimate goals.
I don’t know about you, but my past is littered with partially finished projects that never got off the ground. (Case in point: there’s a partially re-rooted Barbie head sitting next to my desk as we speak.) But I find the time to write. And when I’m not writing, I can work on creative graphics for hours without ever realizing time has passed. Research is like a Vitamin B shot that powers me when I need a pick-me-up. Most of us never worked as hard as we do on the thing we love to do, to the extent that it doesn’t feel like work.
In RANCH DRESSING, that same character who feared failure, who needed a few books to discover her motivation, goes on a trip to a dude ranch that her father-in-law is thinking of buying. She has no interest in the cowboy life, or western wear, or anything more than the Louis L’Amour books she packed, but the one thing Samantha Kidd cares about is solving other people’s problems. So when she’s relegated to the sidelines—just relax, read your book, we’ll handle this—her desire to help out becomes more than a desire, it becomes a mandate. The more she’s told not to get involved, the more she must. She can’t help herself—she’s that motivated.
What about you, Reds? What projects have you let languish on the shelf and what keeps you motivated?
DIANE’S BIO & SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS:
National bestselling author Diane Vallere writes funny and fashionable character-based mysteries. After two decades in luxury retailing, she traded fashion accessories for accessories to murder. As past president of the national Sisters in Crime organization, she edited the Agatha-Award-winning essay collection PROMOPHOBIA: Taking the Mystery out of Promoting Crime Fiction. Diane started her own detective agency at age ten and has maintained a passion for shoes, clues, and clothes ever since.
SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES:
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Website: https://dianevallere.com
RANCH DRESSING BLURB:
When fashionista Samantha Kidd’s father-in-law arranges a week on the dude ranch he’s aiming to buy, Samantha preps for blue skies and clean living. But all too soon she learns life on the ranch is anything but calm. When the owner is found dead inside one of the stables, all signs point to murder.
As Samantha wrangles clue after clue, she smells something rotten—and it’s not manure. In her quest for the truth, she encounters quirky cowhands, brazen barrel racers, and suspicious horseplay—not to mention a social paradigm straight from the eighteen hundreds.
Can Samantha bring justice to the wild west of eastern New Jersey, or will a renegade ranch dweller get away with murder?
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