TV Guide Horoscope By Sally Brompton

Aries (March 21-April 20) If you aim for quality rather than quantity this week, you’ll build something that not only stands the test of time, but makes sure your name is always remembered. You won’t lack for energy, but you must remember to focus it.

That was the source of my inspiration yesterday. We’re not TV watchers. We rarely buy the TV Guide, but this week, Mike picked it up because he wanted to see if there was anything worth watching this year (there isn’t). It had been sitting on the dining room table and I read my horoscope with my morning bean burrito yesterday.

Horoscopes are so general that they can really fit into anyone’s life. They fall under the “Good Advice for Idiots” category of fortune telling. This weekend, I was the idiot that needed the good advice.

The problem was this: I knew that it would be a short chapter. I try to make my chapters about eight pages long. That feels right to me, but this chapter was only going to be five pages or so, so I was trying to stuff the introductions of two very important characters into one chapter and still keep it about eight pages long. It was a bad decision that paralyzed me all weekend long.

Silly me. I’m not writing a computer book. My chapters don’t need to reach a certain length to appease the publisher. I’m in total control of this book. No one would even notice if a chapter was only five pages long instead of eight. I’ve seen chapters in fiction books that are only one sentence.

It took the TV Guide Horoscope to convince me that it was ok for me to give each character his own chapter. Quality not quantity is such a generic piece of good advice, but I needed it this week. Thanks, Sally Brompton. Good call this week. I don’t believe you are psychic or can read the stars or alignment of the planets in a supernatural way, but you gave me a good piece of advice this week and I’m grateful.