Plans and outlines and hopes and dreams are all fine and dandy, until they’re not.

Until Life happens—sticking its nose through the crack in the door that you left open for some fresh air, thinking you were impervious to a stiff breeze.

Sometimes, even then, a plan is useful to hold you in place, keep you on track and your goal in sight.

But sometimes, you want to crumble those plans into a ball and toss them out the window.

Don’t do it!

Flatten out your paper ball of plans.

Then, set it aside.

Don’t abandon it.

As difficult as it is for me to admit, I’ve had to set aside my writing goals and plans.

Even so, I can still hear my characters talking to me, giving me ideas (which I dutifully jot down in my phone) and letting me know they’ll be ready for me when I’m ready.

I miss them.

I miss writing.

This is a good sign.

That’s why I’m not abandoning my plans.

If I didn’t miss them, well, that would be an indication that I’ve been on the wrong track anyway.

If you feel as if you’ve lost a big part of yourself while tackling other things and veering off your path, that’s your sign that you should get back to it as soon as you can.

My detour has been preparing for a big trip.

Using this detour as much as I possibly can for the good of my writing, I took note of an interesting thing.

Just like in a good story, occurrences/issues/problems keep popping up.

I’ve been calling these occurrences “layers.”

My friend that I walk with every morning is probably sick of hearing about my latest layer.

Seems there’s a new one daily.

Each layer isn’t really earth-shaking on its own, but collectively they’ve been enough to possibly derail the trip altogether.

Each layer is a plot twist.

Even I don’t know if this trip will come to fruition.

I think it will, but who knows?

When my husband and I first thought about our trip, we planned for him to fly home on his own, while I have a week by myself in Munich and Amsterdam to wait for my daughter to arrive in England for the next leg of my trip.

At the outset, the biggest plot point was that week by myself.

I’ve never done that.

I’ve travelled to a destination alone, but I’ve always met someone once I landed—either my sister or a friend or my father or my son.

So going somewhere ON MY OWN is pull-up-my-big-girl-panties stuff.

In a foreign country no less.

Imagine my surprise, when the layers started piling on.

Pretty soon, being on my own wasn’t the biggest plot point.

“Will this trip actually happen?” is the big question now.

Just like in any good novel, this story of mine has layers.

It certainly keeps things interesting and keeps me turning the pages. (Because what else can I do?)

I’ll let you know how it ends.

In the meantime—Authors: don’t forget to add lots of juicy layers to your stories to keep things interesting, and non-authors: just yell “plot twist!” whenever crazy things happen and carry on.

Until next week,

~ Gail

Countdown: 15 weeks left of 2024

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