Healing with the Seasons
Updates on The Archive and more!
If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is an essay in my ongoing “Writing Fiction to Heal in Real Time” series where I deep-dive into my writing fiction to heal method as field work and a case study. To begin, I will be working through my story, The Archive, which you can find more information on here.
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When I first started The Archive, I didn’t know if it would be a novel, a journal, a survival manifesto, or a conversation with the ghosts in my bones. I just knew I had to write it.
Back then, I was in a different season of myself — both literally and figuratively. I was in the early days of collapse-awareness. And that initial stage is a doozy. It’s confusing, frightening, demanding, urgent, palpable. It demands to be seen, honored and addressed.
And so, that’s exactly what I did with The Archive. It became a quiet little experiment with big feelings.
It asked me to show up not as someone with answers, but as someone willing to write the questions in real time.
It asked me to let go of polished pages in favor of honest ones.
It asked me to trust that even if I was writing into the abyss, something — someone —might echo back.
And you did.
Even when it was just a heart emoji, a comment, a DM that said “this line gutted me” — you reminded me that this strange little apocalypse mattered. That Ari mattered. That I mattered.
Here’s another paradox of writing fiction to heal… it doesn’t follow the rules. It doesn’t care if you planned on writing for 6 months or a year. It doesn’t care if you had plans for the story.
Writing fiction to heal cares about one thing — healing.
When I began writing The Archive, the lens of my healing was focused on early collapse-awareness feelings like: abandonment, fear of uncertainty, survival mode, control and grief. The story grew from that soil. Each character, especially Ari, became an extension of that part of me — the one searching for meaning in chaos.
But then came Demi.
Demi didn't just shift the narrative — she fractured it open in the best possible way. Her presence invited me into deeper questions. Not just “how do we survive?” but “how do we live well in ruin?” How do we find magic, connection, mystery when everything we knew has already burned down?
Somewhere in there, I started to feel a quiet confidence creeping in. Not the performative kind. Not the brand-building kind. But the kind that grows in the shadows — fed by consistency, curiosity, and creative devotion.
Not the kind that says, “Look at me!”
The kind that says, “I’m proud of how I show up for myself, even when no one’s watching.”
And now? I can feel that The Archive is asking for a breath. A pause. Not an ending, but a shifting. A changing of seasons. Because stories, like healing, are not linear. They are cyclical, seasonal, and sacred.
Embracing this seasonal approach not only aligns with my INFJ brain but also allows me to dance with my creativity rather than fight against it. It reminds me that each pause is not a failure but an essential part of the cycle — a chance to let the next season birth new insights and growth. It's fascinating to see how others, like S.E. Reid from **Talebones, adopts a similar approach, reinforcing the idea that stories and creativity thrive when we follow the natural rhythms of our personal and creative lives.
So I’m calling this the end of Season One for The Archive.
I agonized over this decision for longer than I care to admit. I kept wondering: What will people think? What if I lose momentum? What if pivoting means I’ve failed?
But then I remembered: lower the stakes. This is exactly the point of an experiment.
This isn’t failure. This is integration.
This is me listening.
This is me trusting the rhythm of the work — and the rhythm of my own nervous system.
So, what’s next?
I’m taking a break. Somewhere between two and four weeks. During that time, I’ll be writing a few other things (because, let’s be real, I can’t not write), but I’m also letting the next season of The Archive simmer. I want to come back with more clarity, more intention, and maybe a few surprises.
I’ll also be talking to you about my upcoming novel publication, Until They Burn. (Yes — my very first “writing fiction to heal” novel will finally be released!)
I might also explore a short story challenge. Or a pop culture + myth curation series. Or something entirely unexpected. Because this year is still an experiment. I’m still becoming the kind of writer I want to be —1 the kind who writes with the seasons, not the algorithms.
And if you’ve been here, reading along, sending love into the void… thank you. You’re a part of this story too. Always.
There’s so much I still want to write.
So many stories I still want to tell.
But for now, I’ll leave you with this:
For everything there is a season.
And I’ll see you in the next one.
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To read the backstory to why I’m writing this series:
To read the backstory on why I’m serializing “The Archive,”:
All dashes are intentionally and 100% mine and not the result of AI because I’ve always been obsessed with using dashes and I don’t care what anyone says — I’m going to use them (see).