(an admittedly dramatic title that is nonetheless true
Today, my romantasy novel The Fool & the Threads of Time is launching on Kickstarter—hurrah hurrah! 🌟🥳
Writing this book has been a total trip, not least in that it’s made me less afraid of dying, which I absolutely did not expect. Allow me to explain…
The first time I heard the word “multihyphenate,” I breathed a curtain-rustling sigh of relief. Granted, it’s become so overused that now I’m more likely to eye-roll (I’m also lookin’ at you, “quantum” 👀), but the fact remains: It’s incredibly freeing to forgo cramming myself into a catchy logline.
I study Jungian psychology, magic, the history of occultism, weird bodywork minutiae, writing craft—plus a bunch of other stuff.
At the same time, I’ve noticed a priority shift in recent years: I want less.
Less stuff, less things on my to-do list, less time on screens. Just…less.
One factor is being diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. I can’t do it all. I can’t even pretend I can do it all, because the mere thought is stressful and has my poor little thyroid wringing its hands. 😟
This is one of the many reasons writing fiction has been such a balm to my soul. In my romantasy series, I can explore all of the weird things I’m into without having to launch 17 different businesses and take up 85 hobbies. I get the experience of tumbling down rabbit holes of niche research—aka catnip for my brain—but once I’ve written that part of the story…moving on!
For most of my life, I’ve quested for cohesiveness
I felt besieged by loose threads. If only I could find the right system, I thought, or day planner or supplement or course or whosie whatsit, then everything would feel “together.”
Looking back, it’s clear that this nagging incoherence was driven by a lack of integration within, which was reflected in my scattershot external goals and serious lack of boundaries. Now, to be sure, it’s not like I’m 100% integrated—all done! This is certainly a lifelong journey (and honestly, how boring if it wasn’t), but I feel more whole than ever before.
Estranging from my entire family over the course of four years has played a huge role, though it’s a bit chicken-and-egg. 🐣 Was I able to take that step because I feel more whole (yes), or did that decision help me feel more whole (also yes)?
With fiction writing, my many aspects now have a place to roost, and I don’t think it’s coincidental that I’ve been using Internal Family Systems a LOT over the past decade. For me, this entails bringing inner parts to the Treehouse, a welcoming hub in my psyche where they can connect to Self and to one another.
The more this inner sense of homecoming took root, the more it rippled outward through what I chose to spend time and energy on—like writing this book.
Given how long it took to write (three years), I truly don’t think I would’ve stuck it out to the finish line, back when my inner system was a 24/7 circus. 🤡
The craving for instant gratification and external validation…
…was like a juggling bear on a creaky unicycle that left me with precious little patience (and, I imagine, contributed to my overactive thyroid). I had to launch projects yesterday, so other people could decide whether those things had been worth creating.
*cue the self-worth hamster wheel from hell*
I continually felt behind, though I could never really say behind what—just some nebulous, impossible to attain target.
Recently, though, I had the trippiest sensation…
I was emailing with a fellow romance writer, the two of us gushing over how much fun it is to write smexy books, and I had an image of myself on my deathbed. ⚰️ In this vision I was happily scribbling in a battered notebook, but I died before I could finish the story.
Now, Past Me (and by that I mean Me As Recently As Last Month) would have felt the familiar fluttering of anxiety at not being able to do everything before “time runs out.”
But in that moment, it felt like liquid gold seeping into my bones, setting my entire body aglow as I released a ginormous sigh of satisfaction. I want to be happily scribbling to the very end—it’s like never reaching the bottom of my TBR pile. Sure, there’s the fantasy, I suppose, of having read all the books…but then there won’t be anymore books to read. The horror! 😲
If I die humming with stories, it now feels like this melody will simply ripple onward—perhaps through people reading my books after I’m gone; perhaps, if I’m lucky, through another writer carrying the series forward.
The point is, it feels like such an immense gift to have the time that I do, however long that is, to write stories that bring me so much joy.
The measure of success isn’t whether I manage to finish the 22-book series (based on the tarot’s major arcana), not to mention all the novellas and spinoffs I have planned. Eee! Like the one based on The Canterbury Tales that I’m so excited to write!
No, it’s about the journey, a sentiment that, when I’m feeling impatient, strikes me as the epitome of triteness. 🙄
But it really is. If I do finish the series, the act of typing “the end” on that last book will take all of two seconds. And yes, I’m sure it will feel hella good, but all the stuff in between is where it’s really at.
When the vast majority of my inner system was oriented toward outer metrics of success and garnering approval, it was extremely difficult (read: impossible) to sink into the process. I have no doubt this was a key reason my spirit guides suggested I write a romance novel in the first place. What they knew—and I was blissfully unaware of—was how many revisions would be necessary to pull off this story.
Every time I sat my butt in the chair for yet another round of editing, I was cultivating the patience to give my creative process the time and attention it needed rather than rushing to market in hopes of insta-validation.
The thing is, no amount of external approval can tell me if I’m on the right path. This is what makes Jung’s process of psychological maturation, known as individuation, so scary at times. It’s individual.
There isn’t an expert in the world who can prescribe my path or yours (though many will try).
Here’s what I would say to my Baby Romance Writer Self, starting that first draft.
(And to you, dear reader, if you need a bit of encouragement with your own creative projects.)
Figuring out what’s deeply meaningful to you requires, among other things, giving yourself permissions. Not a typo—that’s permissions, plural.
In my case, I had to give myself permission to write fiction.
Then to write romance.
Then to sit down today for an hour, first thing, to write.
Then tomorrow, to do it again.
To spend a month revising when I just wanted to release the book already.
And then another month. And another.
Permission to say no to that social thingie I felt guilty skipping, so I would have energy to write the next morning.
Permission to say no to so many things, really.
And permission to say yes to myself, to what truly lights me up, even if other people think it’s silly.
Here’s the thing: Not everyone will understand why this thing is important to you—this I can guarantee. Some people will, and that’s wonderful! But ultimately, it’s up to you to continually stoke that inner fire, to keep applying butt to chair or whatever devotions your vision asks of you.
And you might have to do so without external validation. (Maybe for a long time.)
Particularly when a vision is fresh, when it’s still hazy even to you, it’s more likely others won’t understand. That’s okay! I mean, it can be scary, sure, but it’s okay—you’ll be okay. 🩷
The vision will likely change—that’s okay, too. The first draft of this book, which I will never, ever show you 🫠 is soooo different from the final version. I’m not even sure that first draft qualifies as a book.
The ego likes to bolster our confidence through illusions of certainty, even when that certainty keeps us stuck in something that isn’t working, that we’ve already outgrown, that was only ever meant to be a practice round.
Be courageous enough to let your vision evolve, because it will. This, too, I can guarantee.
And this is the point, I think, of all art—to grapple with the reality of ceaseless change and to be changed, ourselves, in the process of grappling.
Perhaps the ultimate change, for us folk who are partly flesh and blood, is death. It’s waiting for us all, which is such a strange thought to me some days. Isn’t it downright mind-bending that, ultimately, we know how this story will end, and yet…there is so much left to be written? Like all the parts in between.
Each of us is tasked with writing our own story, and my wish for you, for all of us, is that you have the courage to tell a tale that is deeply, personally meaningful.
A tale that no one else could write in quite the same way, because no one else is quite like you.
So with that, my friend, here is the story I wrote, in a way that no one else ever could. Allow me to introduce…The Fool & the Threads of Time.
