Open Letter to the Moments That Broke Open My Story Mind
Listen Instead
Dear Confluence,
You didn’t arrive softly. You hit like impact pressure. You cracked whatever old shell I was using to keep my writing small, and everything since has been fallout in the best way.
I didn’t plan any of this. I was just writing posts and stories between meals and laundry. And then one spark after another started stitching themselves into something I couldn’t ignore.
The Actor Who Showed Me the Anatomy of Ache
First came the performance that cracked my ribs open. A micro-expression here, a held breath there, a look that said everything the dialogue didn’t. I saw Walter O’Brien before I had words for what I was seeing. I recognized the architecture of ache, the barely controlled leak, the slipping mask. That performance taught me how to read scenes by how they bleed. And thus began my obsession with Scorpion fanfic.
The Reviewer Who Flattened Toby
The next spark was irritation. Some fanfic reviewer dismissed one of the characters, Toby Curtis, as nothing more than a two-dimensional addict, as if that was all he was allowed to be. No nuance, no ache, no leak. Just a label slapped over a human being. That refusal to look deeper flipped a switch in me. I realized I’d been reading subtext my whole life and mistaking it for something everyone did. Turns out, not everyone sees the tremor beneath the joke or the wound under the bravado. That review made me pick up the tools I’d been honing and get to work.
If you’ve ever felt stuck staring at a blank page, this little worksheet will help you start writing again with less pressure and more joy.
Learning Pressure, Ache, Mask, Leak
I kept pushing myself, kept researching, kept trying to figure out why I was so bothered, and once I had language for what I was sensing, the whole creative world snapped into focus. Pressure points. Narrative fractures. The exact second the character stops pretending. The moment the story demands truth. I started watching and reading everything with new eyes. Not just shows. People. Relationships. My own thoughts. Stories bleed in the same places humans do.
The Blog Became a Record of the Shift
I thought Tiaras In The Wild would be lifestyle posts and spark-chasing. (Though I do still love a good spark-chasing or humorous essay!) Instead, it became the document of my creative tectonics shifting underneath me. Every pin, every essay, every Sparkletter was me learning how to translate the thing behind the thing. I wasn’t reinventing my writing. I was finally catching up to how my mind already worked.
And Then There Was Micah Rowe
Somewhere in the middle of all this, one character stepped into the light and refused to leave. Micah Rowe. Modern Micah. Pirate Micah. The-heart-of-Selkie Micah. The version who leads, the version who breaks, the version who finally lets go. He was never supposed to be the center, but he is. A two-book duet rose around him like it was always waiting. Every ache I studied led back to him. Every leak. Every mask. He became the axis everything else spun around.
And now I find myself here.
This Is My Open Letter
To the actor who showed me what depth really looks like.
To the reviewer who couldn’t see depth.
To the ache, the mask, the leak.
To pressure and the exact second a scene bleeds.
To every archetype that taught me how to read a soul by its cracks.
To this blog, which accidentally recorded the entire awakening.
To Micah, who keeps inhabiting the heart of everything I write.
Thank you for breaking open my story mind. Thank you for giving me a place to land.
This is only the beginning.
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