There’s something mesmerizing about the way the ocean breathes—the tide retreating to unveil a hidden world, then surging forward to reshape everything in its path. I’ve walked those shores, watching the water withdraw, leaving behind shells, forgotten relics, and scars carved into the sand. It’s a quiet magic, this rhythm of ebb and flow, and I’ve come to see that storytelling follows the same pattern. Words arrive in waves, spilling onto the page in a rush, then recede just as quickly, leaving only traces of the stories still waiting to be told.
For years, I drifted from writing, pulled by the currents of life, responsibility, and self-doubt. I told myself there would be time later, that the stories could wait. But even as I let go, writing never let go of me. It lingered at the edges of my mind, a quiet whisper on the wind—never lost, only waiting to be found again.
Then the storm came—not all at once, but in relentless waves, eroding everything solid beneath me. Not long after I left teaching, my family unraveled. My long-lost brother returned, broken. My beloved dog fell ill, a tumor overlooked until it was too late. My father’s cancer advanced to stage 4. Life as I knew it collapsed, and the only way I knew to endure was to build something unshakable on paper. I didn’t walk—I ran to my desk. Writing became my refuge, my anchor. For eight, ten hours a day, I filled pages—shaping characters, refining a story. It wasn’t just work. It was survival. The only thing I knew how to do.
Amid the wreckage, I completed another novel—a story shaped by grief and refined by necessity. I built it with intention, structuring each rise and fall along the Hero’s Journey, crafting arcs that carried weight, ensuring the plot unfolded with precision. And it worked. The story held together, solid and real, born from the fear of losing everything I loved. What emerged was a middle-grade thriller set in Florida, a place as wild and untamed as the emotions that fueled its creation.
Now, I see it everywhere—the old notebooks stacked on my shelves, the half-finished drafts buried in folders, the fleeting ideas scrawled on scraps of paper. These are the remnants left behind when the tide recedes—proof of the time I spent elsewhere, away from the work I was meant to do. I lost too much time to distractions, doubt, and detours, but I won’t lose another moment. Now, I write every day, without hesitation or excuse. The weight of lost time doesn’t hold me back—it drives me forward. There’s too much I need to say, and not enough time to say it all.
If you’ve ever felt your writing drift away, if you’ve stepped back from storytelling only to feel its pull once more, know this—stories never leave us. They wait. They linger in the quiet, tucked into the corners of our minds, ready to surface when we’re ready to receive them.
So step into the current. Let the tide carry you. Trust that the words will return, rising to meet you, ready to be told.
Welcome back.
~ L.S.