I was completely stuck; stopped dead in the middle of the first draft.

Up to that point, the writing had been going well. My protagonist, Princess Blair, was satisfyingly embarked on her quest (the journey home for herself and her baby), and I was on a roll. I expected to get the Princess quickly through the wolf-ruled grasslands and on to her next adventure.

But then I met Borealis, a lone wolf with a haunted past and a great many gifts tucked away behind a self-deprecating manner, and Mara, a brave, beautiful and overly-confident she-wolf who is certain that Borealis, with his ugly face and loner ways, is the greatest loser she has ever met.

Instead of being wrapped up quickly in one chapter, as I had planned, this pair of wolves raced through chapter after chapter, threatening to take over the entire book.

Like an inexperienced driver of a car stuck in the mud, I kept going forwards and backwards over the same ground, digging a deeper rut for myself each time.

I was determined to keep these two wolves to one chapter, just like other supporting characters.  

I wrote, trimmed, cut, rewrote, and cut again.

I was getting nowhere.

Finally, in my desperation I complained to my husband Frank that I was completely stuck and that these characters weren’t behaving at all as I needed them to.

Frank gave me some wise advice. “Just write the chapters the way they are coming to you,” he said. Later I could trim and revise. “But for now,” he said, ”Just get it on paper.”

I did that, writing extra pages that never made it into the book, but also four good  chapters, all of which ended up working fine for helping Blair along her way. And these chapters, which at one time I had cut almost completely out of the book, became favorite parts of the book for many readers of the trilogy (and me too).

I was the one who had been stuck, not the wolves.  I was stuck because of my stubbornness. I had made a plan for how things should be, and the book wasn’t following the plan.

When I let go, went ahead and wrote the first draft even though it wasn’t going the way I thought it should, I opened myself up to new possibilities and new solutions.

Which is a truth that applies to more than writing fiction, I thought, as I was planning this blog post in my head while riding my bike home in a snowstorm that wasn’t supposed to start until later. It’s true as I type this up this blog entry while “sheltering at home” from a virus that was on no one’s horizon a few months ago.

And it’s going to be true when my husband and I publish my most important book yet (the one I had planned to introduce with fanfare and trumpets) while we are sequestered at home in the middle of an enforced Sabbath in our world and in our lives.

So… whatever situation in your life that is misbehaving and causing you to pull your hair out…. Just go with it.  Let the first draft come, of whatever you’re trying to do.  Just make it/write it/create it/let it happen. You may find out that it’s not only “just fine” but perhaps far better than anything you ever imagined.

P.S., The day I wrote this,I got a text and picture from my niece. 

“We’re on the exciting and adventurous wolf’s path tonight. Series being loved again by the next set of children! Nora loves Blair and the wolves!”

Yes, sometimes life’s curve balls take us straight to better places.