Maplines of Story
The heat is pressing in today, inching closer and closer to 100 degrees. It’s March, but it feels like July. And my mind is on last summer and the ways in which my creativity and capacity took a hit.
Back in May, I was talking with my best friend. Women are a Dangerous Magic was weeks away from being published, I was weeks away from starting a new role at work, and my creativity was beginning to claw at my insides—begging for release. She’d been feeling the same clawing sensation, and had been writing short stories to satiate that inner fire.
Slowly, a story took shape in my veins.
“I might have something too.” I tell her. “I think I might try and write it.”
I didn’t tell anyone about it. At first, I approached it tentatively—like a wild animal. I thought I would publish it under a pen name. Completely separate myself from the mix; allowing room and space for the story to expand how it needed to unfold. May turned into June, and I started my new role at work.
“You sound different.” My women would tell me in response to voice memos.
And I did sound different. I heard it too. I felt calmer. Safer. There were so many reasons for this: getting out of a toxic environment, tapping into my creativity again, watching my latest book sprout wings and fly—June was, in all honesty, the best month I’d had in a long time. Every day I’d come to the page and every day the words would fly out of me. The story was showing herself to me but most importantly, I was having fun. I was playing with my muse and in response she was giving me ample room for inspiration to grow. Not only was I writing this novella, I had other ideas for other books. I was thinking to myself perhaps I need to create a publishing calendar. Perhaps I might actually have stumbled into a flow here.
All at once, it was as if my flow had been siphoned.
But I knew the culprit. I knew it by the way it twisted in my gut and kept me caught in its snare.
//
Nine months later, I find myself finally writing the final words of this particular manuscript.
In this story, Olivia, my main character, is taking the long road home to reclamation. She’s lost herself along the way—letting go of love, letting go of her roots, letting go of her purpose. Instead, she finds herself settling. She’s returned home, but works at her best friend’s bakery. She also is still with her fiancé who she knows is cheating but can’t prove it. She hasn’t sang in years, can’t remember what it’s like to capture lyrics on paper, and is running from memories that haunt her.
And then her ex walks in the shop while she’s wearing a disaster of a wedding dress and such is the catalyst for her return.
She finds herself, through a lot of tears, and remembers what it’s like to believe in something bright and beautiful.
//
There were so many moments this year where I honestly thought—honestly believed—that somehow the words had left me. So many conversations I had with myself and my women where I struggled with the frustrating truth: when I step away from social media, when I allow myself to respond to Source vs the environment around me, when I get quiet and do the work to clear my channel so that I am receiving the words I know I am meant to share and not a reflection of someone else’s creativity, THAT is when the words return. THAT is when I feel most myself. And yet (there’s always a yet here, isn’t there?) what makes this so convoluted is that social media has been the de facto way that author’s get the word out about the books they’re writing.
So if I stay on social media, and engage, more people know about my books and perhaps I’ll gain more traction.
But if I step away from social media, and focus on writing what I know I am meant to write, eventually I tap into flow and my focus turns razor sharp. My intuition feels fuller—more robust and clear. My channel more alive.
It feels like a simple solution, but also, I am now breaking free from decades of scrolling. Muscle memory is a thing—and so is distraction. To say that it has taken a ton of grit to trust myself and these stories is a severe understatement. Especially with the constant noise of the horrors continuing to persist. It’s 8 of Swords energy. I know this is a web of my own making. I know the culprit is the blindfold I’ve placed on myself, and the trap is me getting lost in an endless scroll. With that scroll, a wall surfaces between me and my creativity. I cannot see the story anymore. I cannot hear the characters anymore. Everything is a fog.
And so when I find myself spiraling, when I’m lost in the sea of anxiety and endless breaking news, when I am overwhelmed by the ways in which those in power are following through long-held patterns of control and abuse—I kiss the wall.
//
I first hear the phrase kiss the wall from Stephanie Greene. She says that sometimes, there are places within us that grow hardened as a way to protect. Sometimes, a wall forms because we are not ready. We are not yet trustworthy with that piece of Truth that has been hidden. And so we wait. We listen. We kiss the wall. We show love and care and remind that part that there is no expectation, only presence. And even this, even waiting for the story to reveal itself, requires consent.
And so I wait.
I kiss the wall.
This looked like showing back up to my forgotten manuscript in January. It looked like purchasing a Brick so I would be locked out of the social media apps on my phone. It looked like letting go of the tight grip of control I had on what I should be doing as an author and I let my intuition lead this Leo Midheaven to where the Sun peeks behind the clouds. It looked like blogging again—letting my thoughts unfurl in a spiral.
It looked like reading through what I had written and allowing the story to show me where to go. I lay my hand on the wall keeping me from my story and I wait for the breath.
This paragraph feels wrong.
This chapter feels too tight.
There’s more here this character isn’t saying.
Slowly, I remember.
Slowly, the story begins to breathe again.
And like my character, I am thrust into a place of reclamation.
I am let through the cracks. I can see the expanse of this particular landscape and I know where to pencil in map lines to my soul.
That’s what writing is, anyway. Carving out map lines to your soul, letting the characters speak the Truth you might be too afraid to whisper, and trusting that the world you’re creating is leading you further in, deeper into your inner knowing.
//
I pull a card this morning as I process what to write today. It’s 3 of Wands. Believe bigger, the card says. And I think of these past nine months—a full gestation cycle. Birthing this story and creating something new, a series of novellas that center on a found family. Some exiled, some hiding, all reclaiming parts of their soul that have been lost and forgotten in their individual ecosystems. But together, they’re creating a mycelium network of care. A pulsing, breathing, organism of community. Inspiration is here, the card reads, but don’t forget to rest.
I laugh to myself, the reminder an echo of truth I’ve heard over and over again the past few years.
With rest, comes clarity.
There has been clarity here. A deeper knowing opening up and gathering me into her arms. A resting place.
There are other map lines I have yet to draw. Other landscapes where I know I must kiss the wall in a different way—show the story I am here, I am waiting, and I am ready.
It’s March, but it feels like July. The world is still on fire, but so is my creativity.
I let the fire burn, lighting the way in front of me.
