This is a question that people have asked me about writing fiction. Where do my ideas come from? The answer to that is simple: They are everywhere.
 
If you look at situations and people as subjects for a romance novel or novella, it’s not hard to imagine stories around them, once you get in the habit of doing so. Keep your notebook handy.
 
Here is an example:  Recently a distant relative of mine got married in Hawaii. I saw the photos on Facebook, looked at the beautiful bride, and enjoyed the romantic, tropical setting. I don’t know these people personally so I don’t know their actual story. What I can do is use their photos as a jumping off point for creating a romantic plot.

The first step to coming up with a romance plot is to ask, what if?

• What if the bride only knew the groom for a week before she married him? 
• What if the groom is on the run from the law?
• What if the bride is on the run and the groom doesn't know it?
• What if the bride’s family doesn’t want her to marry him?
• What if the bride has been married before—to an abuser who is after her?
• What if leading up to the wedding, one of the couple became seriously ill?
  
• What if one of the bridesmaids is secretly in love with the would-be groom and will do anything...?
  

If you have ever spent time in an airport waiting for your flight to be called, you’ve had lots of time to watch people and make up stories about them. The tired-looking woman in the business suit—see her over there, texting—perhaps she has spent so much time on the road that her boyfriend is losing interest. What does she have to do to keep her relationship alive? Or, perhaps she is never in on place long enough to have a relationship but she longs for a romance and a family.
 
A man wearing climbing gear sits next to the window reading a newspaper. Where has he come from and where is he going? Is there a woman in the city wishing he loved her more than he loves the mountains? You have enough conflict there to create a dynamic plot.

The young adults playing volleyball on the beach all look so happy and carefree. But what if that girl with the brown ponytail looks longingly at the tall, blonde guy who never seems to notice her? What is their story?
 
The choice, of course, is yours. You can make up any tale you like about anyone you like. Put them in a setting that appeals to you, and in a situation that is difficult. Give them an attraction for each other, but lots of obstacles that they have to overcome before getting together.

When you figure out those basics, voilà! You have a romantic plot.

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Remember those summer days when you played outside until long after the sun went down and came in smiling and worn out? After you mom made you wash and get into your summer pyjamas you flopped into bed and instantly fell asleep between crisp cotton sheets. You woke when the sun came in your window and hit the ground ready for another fun day.
 
That was then, you say, and this is now.
 
Stay with me for a moment. What happened along the way that robbed us of the delicious experience of a good night’s sleep? Our date books are crammed with commitments; we’re on call for everyone and the dog, and after another exhausting day, we fall into bed only to be wakened by snoring mates, full bladders, or the thought of tomorrow’s schedules.

We really need to re-learn the art of the wonderful sleep. For sleeps to be luscious and satisfying, we need to put aside the cares of the day early in the evening. If the cares of the day are so numerous that it is not possible to retire them early, then perhaps it is time to re-think how much we are trying to cram into our days.
 
Not long ago, I felt caught in the constant swirling cycle of too many things to do and not enough time to do them all. I stayed up too late, woke in the night and lay awake thinking about important every detail I must remember to circumvent some crisis. Eventually falling asleep just before dawn, I then spent my days like a flag at half-mast. I was neither awake nor asleep but dragged through my days too foggy to accomplish much at all. Anxiety and fluctuating hormones were ruining my life. Finally, I went to see my doctor. He prescribed a rather benign drug whose side-effect is that it makes you sleepy. I re-entered the world of the childlike sleep.

Once I began sleeping well again, I had the clarity required to see what needed to change to make my life simpler and less stressful. I realized that there are some things that I will not be able to do, that I must choose one main course in life and focus on it. My evenings have become quieter and calmer. I spend more time with my husband. And I look forward to going to bed, sliding between my pale yellow sheets and reading, or snuggling into my puffy pillow and drifting off.
 
Sleeping luxuriously means giving your whole self to the process.

• Go to bed early enough so that you have time to wind down before sleep.
• Dress your bed in soft linens that you love to touch and that caress your skin.
• Choose beautiful and comfortable nightclothes to sleep in.
• Make your bedtime routine a time to pamper yourself and find quiet.
• Keep the television, the pets, and the kids out of your bedroom.
• Eliminate noise and interruptions.
• If you read in bed, choose something soothing that lulls you into restfulness.

 
It may not seem easy to go back to those delicious sleeps of childhood, but it is possible to improve your sleep life. By endeavouring to make the experience a luscious one, you improve your chances of being well-slept.

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Most of what we think is a big deal is really no big deal. Holidays and family events are obvious reasons to celebrate, but can sometimes also be exhausting if you are trying to live up to traditional standards or other people’s ideas about how a celebration should happen. Instead, why not pick your own reasons and ways to celebrate?
 
Celebrate a perfect hair day by taking yourself out for iced coffee. The fact that your bathroom got cleaned is cause for celebration, especially if someone else did it.  How about celebrating a good night’s sleep? What about the first daffodil bloom in your garden or the first hummingbird at your feeder? Life is full of special and ordinary moments so why not just pick some and make them a celebration?

While you are at it, choose fun people with whom to celebrate. Choose to spend as much time as possible with people who make you laugh. It has been known for ages that laughter is good for you. The Bible says that a happy heart is as good as medicine. Plus it’s also a lot cheaper and far more fun than drugs and surgery!
 
Here are some ideas of how to celebrate and laugh:

• Get a new haircut and do it with your most fun friends.
• Spend a day at the beach with children if you have them in your life. If not, pay attention to how other people’s children have fun.
• Treat yourself to a pedicure and luxuriate in the pampering.
• Go to the library for a quiet afternoon and read all the magazines.
• Attend a comedy show or watch a funny movie. Allow yourself to belly laugh.
  

Simply adding more laughter and fun to your life can not only improve your life, but prolong it as well. Laughter is a spirit lifter and the best antidote for depression. It is also known to reduce stress, lower blood pressure, elevate mood, boost immune system, improve brain functioning, protect the heart, connect you to others, foster instant relaxation, make you feel good. There are so many reasons to laugh, it is really important to find more laughter in your life.
 
I know that it is not always easy to avoid people who get you down, but you can do things to offset their effect on you. By finding more reasons to laugh, you counteract the dampening affect of the negative influences with which you come into contact. Your light-hearted approach to life may even turn those grumpy folks into happier people, too.

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A few years ago I was working a trade show and while taking a break I walked past a booth advertising a new resort project. When I made eye contact with the man behind the table, we both had a jolt of recognition and said at the same time, “I know you.” It took a few minutes to trace our past connection, but we remembered that he had been the realtor who sold our house several years before. We had also attended the same church for a while.
 
We agreed to have lunch together to talk about old times, and during our conversation over burgers and fries, he made a comment that I have never forgotten. “A hundred years from now there will be all new people on the earth.” I realized, that with only a few exceptions, the statement was true.

Since then I’ve given that concept a lot of thought. If I am one of the people here now, then there must be a reason for me to be here.
 
What if we are all here at this time because we are the exact complement to the people with whom we will come into contact?
 
What if we are each here to be the one to help someone or several others get through this journey we call life?
 
If that is the case, then what do I bring to the table to offer others as a means to aid them on their journey? What talents and abilities do I possess that will make someone else’s journey easier?
 
If I have a responsibility to the other people who are inhabiting this earth in my time, then I need to look at what my abilities are that I can offer you. If I am to offer you my very best, then I need to use the talents that God gave me to the best of my ability.

There is no point in me spending a lot of time and effort trying to be something I’m not, since my purpose will be thwarted. Assuming that we are given talents and natural abilities which we might develop for the purpose of using them to make the world a better place, then it doesn’t make any sense at all for me to not maximize those talents and abilities.
 
If I spent an inordinate amount of time on meaningless tasks, am I not wasting the time I have been given to develop my talents for the benefit of those around me? Am I not squandering my abilities, to not develop them?
 
Ask yourself:
 
            Why am I here now?
            Who am I here with and why them?
            What do I have to offer ?
            Am I maximizing my talents for the good of myself and the rest of the world?

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It's not unusual to hear writers talk about how hard it is to write, to get published, to find an agent. Some writers talk about writing as though they have to slit their wrists and bleed on the page. For years I believed these people who complained about how hard the writing life was and allowed all this discouragement within the industry to keep me from writing.

But even if it is hard, so what? What isn't?
 
Going to work at a job you hate year after year is hard. Having children and going without sleep night after night as you nurse a sick baby is hard. Making a marriage work through difficult times is hard. Losing a job and wondering where the next meal is coming from is hard. Living with illness, family problems, financial difficulty is hard. Losing a parent, or a child, is hard.

Writing? It's a piece of cake. It’s not hard to sit at a computer and make up a story. Putting words together into cohesive sentences is not difficult at all. It's more fun than a lot of other things that make up ordinary life. The act or writing is simple. Sit, type, read, correct, write some more.

I’m not saying that writing isn’t work though some people seem to think it’s not. Like going to school, or learning a new skill, it will take time and attention. You have to educate yourself to become a good writer. You need to develop your skills, and you need to read a lot. You can shorten that process by working with a good writing coach.
 
Writing a book can take many hours, or even months to complete. After that come the re-writes and the edits to polish a manuscript. Time-consuming? Definitely, but not really that hard.
 
In fact, compared to a lot of other things, writing is easy! 

What about publishing? These days, getting your work in print or digital format has never been easier with print on demand and e-books. Book distribution has also changed in favour of the author. Thank-you Amazon.
 
If you want to publish the traditional way, through a publishing company, it can be a longer and tougher process. Either way, what if it does take a while to see your work in print? Try harder. Do the work. 

Can't find an agent on the first try? Try again.  Don’t give up. Keep on until it works. Rejection won’t harm you, but it you let it, it can stop you. Improve the book. Try again. Do whatever it takes.

But let's all stop complaining about how hard it all is. Try doing something really difficult then come back to writing. I predict that writing will seem a whole lot easier and more fun. Perspective is everything.

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For some time I have been a member of a social group that meets periodically. While I have enjoyed the group and the people in it I was finding myself frustrated by the lack of depth in the relationships and the lack of support when I was going through a difficult time.

After one meeting in particular, I seriously considered leaving the group. I went home feeling like it was over for me. Yet, many months later, I am still a member of the group and I enjoy the interaction more than ever.

What happened to change that?

In another instance, I was considering a certain program in my business and something just didn't sit right. Part of me wanted to move forward, yet I kept feeling like I was dragging my feet and wasn't sure why. I loved the concept and the planning but something in me didn't want to do it.

What was going on?

Once I gave both of these scenarios some thought, I realized that the problem was not with the group, or with the business plans. The problem was that my expectations of what I would get did not match what the situation had to offer. In the first instance, I was expecting a deeper relationship with the group members than anyone else expected or gave. Once I realized that I would never get the kind of support I had expected from these people, I knew I had to change my expectations of the group.

In the second case, I recognized that I had been looking at the business project as having to do it for the rest of my career, which I didn't want to do. When I saw that it was simply a means to an end that would support what I most want to do in my business, I changed my expectations and that foot-dragging feeling disappeared.

It's a bit like trying to get grape juice from a cow. No matter how much you want it or how hard you milk it, you're never going to get any grape juice from that cow. It's time to change your expectations and enjoy the milk for what it is then go to the vine for those grapes.

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I have lots of wonderful things in the works that you won't want to miss.

My next novel in Jill Moss Adventures series is called Indigo Beach. I came across this photo while searching the internet and thought this is perfect for what I have in mind for the setting for scenes from the book. The location of Indigo Beach is still a mystery (to me, too) so we'll all have to wait to find out where it is. Meanwhile, I'm still in the process of working out the plot, and am hoping to have the book out before the end of summer.

If you would like to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you liked best about Picking up the Pieces, or The Glass Dolphin, or both.

Our lives are full of choices and opportunities. Every day we must make choices, some small and fairly insignificant, some monumental and life-changing.

Too often we make choices without thought or preparation. After all, we are busy. Our minds are occupied elsewhere so we choose without stopping to think where this path might take us.

It doesn't have to be that way. We can live our lives with a greater sense of purpose.

One simple guide that I have used over and over with success when faced with a decision on how I will spend my time is to ask myself, "Will this go toward or away from the direction I want my life to take?"

Will volunteering for the parent council at your child's school lead you closer to your goal of being on the town council, for example? Will saying "yes" to a home product party take up time that is best used working on your novel?

If I am asked to take part in a fund-raiser that I deem worthwhile but for which I have no great passion, and it cuts into the time I could spend reading or furthering my business, which are important goals for me, is this the right thing to do?

Keep your destination in mind and make choices that move you continually in the direction of that destination.

In my novels, I write about daring adventures, people doing daring things, and daring to go where others might fear.

In my own life I sometimes live the same way. Not always, of course, since there is nothing particularly daring about going to the grocery store or doing laundry. However, sometimes the choices I make seem quite daring, even to me (and I'm pretty nervy).

In the spirit of encouraging daring you can...

• Dare to be strong
• Dare to be brilliant
• Dare to be yourself
• Dare to be beautiful
• Dare to believe wildly
• Dare to be bold
• Dare to throw off weakness
• Dare to reach higher
• Dare to step out
• Dare to be more
• Dare to have more
• Dare to live more
• Dare to Give more
• Dare to choose
• Dare to laugh
• Dare to cry
• Care to get over the past
• Dare to move on
• Dare to fly
• Dare to love big
• Dare to love God with your all.
  
  Do you dare? Yes, you can.
  

Picking up the Pieces, Wendy Dewar Hughes Genre: Suspense/Thriller

Jill Moss is surprised when she receives her Uncle Neil Bryant’s Bible and discovers that it has certain, odd passages marked. Then she learns that her uncle has discovered an artifact in Mexico that consists of sixteen separate pieces that have been sent to people he knows and trusts. He needs her to travel all over the world to collect all sixteen pieces. Jill prays about it and listens when God tells her to help her uncle out. Thus begins a high speed adventure as Jill meets Marco Jimenez, a handsome Spaniard who helps her out as she is chased and stalked while traveling to collect the pieces of the artifact. The pieces are written in three different and distinct languages: Olmec, Mayan and Hebrew. How is this possible when these three cultures did not exist together and what is the significance of it all? 

The adventures Wendy Hughes puts her heroine through are both thrilling and exhilarating, as are her captivating descriptions of the terrain and beauty of the countries that are visited. It is amazing how beautifully she marries such diverse points of view, taking passages from the bible and scientific knowledge and creating a story that makes a believer out of the reader. The fast paced adventures and love interest keeps the reader eager and unable to put this story down!  

Rose Mary Espinoza, InDTale Magazine
http://www.indtale.com/reviews/picking-pieces

The sciatica that has plagued me for two whole weeks is beginning to wane and giving me more pain-free moments everyday. I am so grateful for the medical help from the hospital and Dr. Phimester and my chiropractor, Dr. Darren Paul. These people and their skills gave me so much relief (not to mention the morphine). I am also thankful for the healing power of Jesus.

Now on a light note, spring is bursting out all over so I thought I would share a little Spring in musical form. Spring Song by Felix Mendelssohn. A lovely piece to calm the mind for writing.

   A few days ago I found some old 3.5" floppy disks that I thought had been lost forever. They contained, among other files, the only digital copy of the first novel I wrote as well as, to my surprise and delight, several other pieces of writing that I had forgotten all about. Thankfully, my husband is still using an older computer so I was able to get my files onto a memory stick. The following short story, called The Library, was an early attempt at writing suspense.

The Library

    Deep in the bowels of the library, in the second basement where the books on the obscure sciences were shelved, she stood, absorbed in a paragraph about the discovery of the mu-meson.  Unaware of time, her finger traced the words. A stringy voice crackled over the sound system announcing that the library would be closing in five minutes. She didn't hear it.

    The book in her hand snapped closed and, looking up, she selected three others from the shelf and headed for the elevator. The library seemed dim, she realized, looking around. There was no one in sight. She pressed the up arrow of the elevator and glanced at her watch. 5:37. The library is supposed to close at five o'clock. Why didn't they announced it? 

    She heard a sound behind her, like footsteps. She swallowed. Perhaps she wasn't the only one here. The doors of the elevator slid open and she scurried inside, turning around so she could look out. She jabbed the CLOSE DOOR button and then MAIN.  

    Stepping out of the elevator on the main floor, she was startled by a sound off to her left. She froze and listened.

    Nothing.

    Cautiously, she started toward the exit doors, keeping her heels up and rolling on the balls of her feet so as to make no sound. 

    There it was again. It sounded like footfalls on the old hardwood floor. She veered right and tiptoed between the soaring shelves then crouched to peer between the levels of books in the direction of the sound. 

    Nothing. 

    Creeping forward, she edged between the rows toward the door. Another snap sounded, behind her, off to her left. Her heart pounded in her throat now. Her breath came in shallow gasps. She opened her mouth so that her breathing would be silent.  Every sound counted. She started down another row of books. 

    She could see the door. 

     Rustling. A ski jacket sleeve brushing against the side of a body? She could feel the dampness in her armpits. Sprinting for the door, she rammed her body against the handle bar. Her head struck the glass but the door held. She whimpered and struck the bar frantically with both hands. 

    The door was locked. Spinning around, she flattened herself against it, her eyes flicking around the huge room, darting between the towering rows of books. 

      Again the floor creaked, this time farther to her right. She lunged behind the librarians' station and searched for a telephone. Snatching up the receiver she saw the number for Campus Security on a sticker and stabbed the buttons with a numb finger. 

      "I'm locked in the library," she whispered to the voice that answered. Peering around the corner of the counter she pleaded, "Get me out of here."

       She sank to the floor and leaned her head against a filing cabinet. The dark fluorescent tubes pinged overhead. Bookshelves groaned and cracked. The library was cooling off in the dusk. She sat and listened. Slowly, she realized that the creaking and snapping came from all over the room. Of course, the library was settling in for the night. 

      Outside, she could hear scuffling and then a key turned in the lock. The door swung open and a uniformed security guard strode in. She jumped to her feet.

      "You all right?" the guard asked.

       "I'm fine," she said, straightening. "Let's go."

In February, the Greater Vancouver Chapter of the Romance Writers of America held a Valentine's Lunch in Steveston, B.C. It was a lovely time, the sun shone, awards were handed out for writing and publishing achievements and many door-prizes were given away.

I received two awards. One was for "Pitching and submitting to an agent in Emerald City (Writers' Conference) and entering two writing contests in 2012". The second was "in recognition of independently publishing two books, Picking up the Pieces and Turning on the Light - Finding Your Sweet Place in the Spirit."

I met new people who do not regularly attend the meetings and got to know others better over a delicious lunch. The whole affair was grace and elegance. Many, many thanks to the organizers.

Picking Up the Pieces by Wendy Dewar Hughes awarded an INDIE 1st Place Blue Ribbon – Inspirational Romantic/Suspense Category By chanti On January 13, 2013.

In News Chanticleer Book Reviews & Media is pleased to announce that Wendy Dewar Hughes has won 1st place in the INDIE Awards, Inspirational Romantic/Suspense Category (a division of Chanticleer Book Reviews Blue Ribbon Writing Contests).

Picking Up the Pieces by Wendy Dewar Hughes 

[Editor's Note: This gripping novel is well-crafted, well-plotted and  suspenseful. It is not your typical "inspirational" novel. Hughes successfully blurs  genres with her well-honed storytelling abilities. ] Chanticleer Book Review Blue Ribbon Awards Writing Contests recognize outstanding books and manuscripts. We are honored to announce the INDIE Awards First Place Blue Ribbon winning novels and their authors. Each winning INDIE  novel was judged for the following qualities:

• Compelling-ness of story
• Professionalism of editing & formatting
• Characterization
• Continuity of story-line
• Satisfying ending (not necessarily “happy”)
• Intriguing opening
• Uniqueness of story
• Writing craft