Everything I need is already there
So I recently finished writing a chapter of a fic that has taken me two years to update. Clearly there are lots of things I could say about this but one that really struck me is how much the answers were already there.
It happened so many times in this chapter. There's over two hundred thousand words already, that helps. We're nearly at the end of the story so it's coming full circle, that helps. I've got two canons to lean on, that really helps. At this point, the story has written itself. Everything I need is already there.
So when I'm wracking my brains for how someone comes out to her mum, it's already there in how she and her partner confessed their love chapters earlier. Often, I forgot what I wrote five years ago so sometimes I was struggling to solve a problem I already solved. I just needed to go back and look. What I needed, or a hint at least, was already there. There's enough material for offhand references, callbacks, inconsistencies. All to be mined.
There are lots of lessons this protracted battle has taught me. But "trust the story, everything I need is already there" is a nice one I will do my best to remember.
It's also probably true about a lot of things! Instead of getting caught up in tiny details I just need to take a step back and look at a whole thing. Trust it, trust myself a bit more.