Does It Resonate?

There’s a lot of advice out there. Whether you are a writer, a painter, an entrepreneur, a parent or a DIY home improvement person, you’ll find advice–and usually far too much of it.

I mean, on the one hand it’s great. If you’re looking for information or support, you’ll definitely find it, but you also have to sift through it, and, frankly, some of it will simply not apply to you or will be bad advice (for you, at least) for a number of reasons.

So what’s a human being to do who wants to figure something out but doesn’t want the mental overload?

See if it resonates

Do you know what that feeling is? When something resonates with me I feel it in my body, my mind and my intuition.

In my body, there is a release of tension and an ease in my breathing. In my mind, I may get excited, curious, or interested. And my intuition gives me that “pull.” That’s when I know something is resonating, and is right for me to act on.

Whatever you do, don’t do your own book cover design…or else

This tends to be the typical advice that indie authors hear when researching book cover design–get a professional to do it, don’t do it yourself or you will have disastrous results. But it never resonated with me.

I was very interested in doing my own book cover designs. Something about it just called out to me. And most importantly, I was willing to learn and to practice. And that’s exactly what I did.

My first several designs weren’t awesome, but I started to get the hang of it after a while and then I kept on improving. I feel fairly confident in my ability to design a book cover these days (and other graphics too) but I found it really difficult to go against the dominant advice surrounding book covers. If I hadn’t resonated so strongly with it, I would have never been able to do it.

Obviously, this is an example of resonating against certain pieces of advice. But what about resonating with?

Look for the thing that jumps out at you

Like everyone else on the planet these days, I read a lot of articles/blog posts, listen to podcasts, watch a bunch of videos, etc. And I’m always looking for the information that I want to keep, so to speak.

If I’m reading a blog post, for instance, I don’t follow it to the letter–no matter how knowledgeable or experienced that person is, I’m looking for the piece that jumps out at me. You know that sentence or paragraph that seems to leap off the page? I’ll probably feel some excitement about it and my body relaxes. I know that this is something I should file away.

The rest of the post may not work for me at all, and that’s fine. If I take away one good thing from a blog post, that’s a success! (For me and for the blogger.) This way, I’m not drowning in information, trying to figure out what applies to me. I’m being selective and letting my intuition guide the way.

Amanda Linehan is the author of North, about a young woman on the run from her past, the law and an old adversary out to get her. Her newest release is Bored To Death: A Vampire Thriller, about a 300-year-old vampire trying to restore the balance between life and death. She has published five novels.