This wasn’t the month I had in mind.

Originally, I planned to be walking the windswept hills of Scotland on a writing retreat—journaling by candlelight, breathing in crisp air, and letting new stories rise up from silence and solitude.

Instead, I’ve been home.
At my desk.
Every day.
With the soundtrack of jackhammers and construction noise just outside my window.

Not quite the peaceful pilgrimage I had hoped for.

But here’s the strange thing. Sitting in the noise, the chaos, the disruption... I started to realize something important. This tension between what I long for and what’s actually happening? That’s the very heart of what I’ve been writing about.

In my new novel—a prequel to my Story Mages saga—a young man sets out to save the people he loves. His parents have been abducted. The girl he cares about is dying. Everything in him screams to act. But before he can begin his quest, he meets a monk who tells him: yes, you’re right... but first, you must wait. You must spend forty days in fasting and prayer before you are ready.

That moment—of being asked to pause when everything in you wants to run—is one I know far too well.

So much of my anxiety, I’ve come to see, isn’t caused by what’s happening. It’s caused by the feeling that I’ve lost control over what should be happening. And the harder I try to hold on to my original plan, the more everything slips through my fingers.

It’s frustrating. It’s humbling. And strangely enough, it’s healing.

Because when I stop trying to force things, and just start telling the story, something shifts. I stop thinking in terms of outcomes, success, income, approval. I start writing from a place of joy. Of trust. Of surrender.

And that’s when the magic happens.

So no, this isn’t the month I envisioned. But maybe it’s the month I needed.