I had to talk with my best friend after a rather big setback at my work. Their father had recently passed away in hospice and we were talking and just the right pieces came into alignment. The funny thing was the story had a particular plan since book one and now it's book 7 over a 1,000,000 words later and I had a specific trajectory in mind but then I started to see the puzzle pieces I had been giving myself since the beginning. I've written about 20 songs performed by the characters in my story and in listening to them I realized I was writing with a subtext it was a silly notion at first that started to make sense.
particularly when I started writing the series there were things that characters did earlier that frustrated me because it didn't quite fit and I was working so hard to make it fit trying to find reasons and there's a particular character that I knew expresses certain things and I was dodging around really leaning into the thoughts of that character because I kind of like them and I don't wanna do anything bad to them. But it's like being a detective of my own story I was looking at the evidence and denying the truth that my own story was telling me but once it clicked it was the only answer because that's the story I was writing rather than what I assumed I was writing and the moment that truth popped into my head all the anxiety and pressure of not being able to resolve the story and feeling frustrated in my life just evaporated and it brought so many things into alignment that helped me personally and creatively.
