The freedom of knowing your niche

The process of The Artist's Way has been a very good one for me.  I won't say I've had thunder and lightning changes the way others do, but I have felt myself changing in quieter ways.  My spirituality and creativity are linked more closely, my faith is strengthened, and my writing life has been...clarified...to me.  I know what I'm going to write now.

I don't know that my writing path has a genre name the way some writers can declare Mystery or Young Adult or Speculative Fiction.  But it's what I'm going to write.  Let me explain my plan for the coffee house book.  (And if you steal my idea, I will hunt you down.  Fair warning.)

The coffee house book is a collection of vignettes that are threaded together by the owner of the coffee house and the coffee house itself.  Each vignette will reveal something about the owner, as well as something about the coffee house.

This is how I decided to set up the coffee house book some time ago, and it's what I've been working toward.  But an amazing, wonderful, scary thing happened this past week.  I got about seven additional project ideas that seem to go along with how I've set up the coffee house book.  (Looks like I know what I'm writing for the next seven years or so.)

When I first started getting the ideas, I was afraid it was my brain's attempt to sidetrack me from the coffee house book.  But something else strange happened.  As I was getting these ideas (and they were half-developing in my head), I was excited about them, but I didn't want to stop my current projects to jump into one of these new ones.  Instead, I wanted to finish the coffee house book so I could start the next one.

The ideas came because this is the way I'm supposed to be writing.  This is my niche.  And once I discovered it, my creativity opened up in the form of these ideas, and the progress I'm making on the coffee house book!

It's a wonderfully freeing feeling to know you're on the right path.



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Image: Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net