Increasing your ability to be wrong, or your ability to see failure as the path to success will pay off exponentially. This might be the most important skill an intuitive can possess.

I started tracking where I would say it (what was going on around the character) and when I would say it (what percentage of the word count) and how I would get out of it.

Questions to ask: “Do I need to go forward or backward?” and “What happened to them that might impact their decisions today?”

So when it comes to something like editing, if you have gifted writer syndrome, you will likely struggle with editing because that’s not what you’ve spent your life being good at.

Again, so often, vigilance is about giving yourself permission to be stuck. It’s okay not to know.

Questions to ask: “Is there something I need to research?” and “Is there a nagging question I need to answer about the character?”

First of all, it means—regardless of what they say (the universal they)—writing with intentional plot structure is not necessary for the story to be compelling.

Some writers can’t put structure in the story, but they can discover structure. Why? Because they intuitively write structure into the story without realizing it.

If we’re intuitive, or if we’re abstract, or if we’re big-picture, we want to edit for intuitive concepts, abstract concepts, or big-picture concepts. We want to edit for coordinates. Are my characters making compelling choices that create conflict (internal or external)? Are the stakes high enough? Do they have enough to lose (internally or