Out of My Hands

My third novel in the Sacred Bundle Series is about women and called, “The Women’s Bundle.” I’ve had a bit of writer’s block about the writing for the past eight months. I’ve told myself it’s because of experiencing so much loss and trauma in our family during that time.

Grief has a way of getting in the way of many activities. I suppose what I could have done was write about it all, and I did take pen in hand and put some thoughts on paper. But scribbling black lines on white pages about the passing of my Reiki Master, our oldest daughter, or about my mother’s dementia, my dying agent, my oldest friend moving away, and my dearest friend battling breast cancer involved more words than I could muster.

I’ve been reading instead. I call it doing research. I’ve got books on survival skills and the history of wood stoves. The writing of women who are currently living as modern day pioneers is insightful as is “Chasing the Dragon” about women with breast cancer. I’ve devoured autobiographies and fiction on life in gold and coal mining towns and reviewed history books about this same era in America. I have pamphlets on dental implants and symptoms of infections.

I think I’ve got enough information now. I’ve developed the story arch and planned the chapters. I’m organized and ready.

The biggest surprise, however, is that what I thought was to be the first chapter, just plain isn’t. How I thought I was going to move through this novel, might be a good plan, but it’s not what’s going to happen. This novel is plainly out of my hands. Every time I logically start the scenes flowing, according to the outline, nothing works right. Pictures, instead, of an entirely different set of scenes are playing like a movie in my brain.

My plans were to write this third book in the same vein as the first two. This one’s so different that I’m going to have to hang on to my keyboard because these women I’ve formulated have minds of their own. I could be in for a wild ride.