This past month, while working on the final book in this series, I ran headfirst into a surreal moment. I won’t talk about the scene. I won’t name the character. I won’t even describe the choice that caused the problem, because I refuse to spoil what readers deserve to discover on their own. What I can say is this: I sat down fully convinced I knew exactly how a pivotal section was supposed to unfold. I was wrong.
The first draft went smoothly enough. The words were competent. The beats landed. But when I read it back, something felt off—like a perfectly polite conversation where no one says the thing that actually matters. So I tried again. Same result. Then again, tighter this time, but still wrong. That’s when the uncomfortable realization crept in: the story wasn’t resisting because I lacked skill or effort. It was resisting because I was trying to make it behave.
Somewhere along the way between book one and book nine, this story took on its own life. It absolutely knows when I’m choosing what’s easiest to write instead of what’s truest to the characters. The breakthrough moment didn’t come from forcing a solution. It came from stepping back and asking a very different question—not How do I fix this? but What am I refusing to let happen? That’s the part I can talk about without spoilers.
Writers like to imagine ourselves as architects, drawing blueprints and executing plans. In reality, long-form storytelling is closer to archaeology. You dig. You brush away dirt. And if you try to rearrange the bones to make them prettier, the whole thing collapses.
When I finally stopped insisting on my version of the moment and listened instead, the story corrected me. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just enough to make it clear that this wasn’t my decision to make—not entirely. What surprised me most was how much relief came with admitting this. Letting go didn’t weaken the book; it strengthened it. It simply fits. And fitting, I’ve learned, is one of the hardest things to achieve on purpose.
Sometimes the smartest thing a writer can do is get out of the way, and trust that the story knows exactly where it’s going—even when you don’t.
