Last night, the kids and I watched Encanto together. Normally I use their movie time to do something else, and therefore I had only seen bits and pieces of it. Mea culpa. This movie is fantastic. Just when you think Disney has sold out completely and forgotten the heart of humanity, they go and write a story rooted in sacrificial love:

After the movie, my eight-year-old daughter and I turned on the sing-along version and rewatched the songs. When we came to “Dos Oruguitas,” in an attempt to explain the gist of the song to her, I latched on to the word futuro. “He gave his life for his children, for the future,” I told her. “That’s what a good father does.”

Cue the emo moment. We finally have a song for Molly Chase.

If you’ve read In Pieces, or even if you’ve read the first paragraph of the back cover blurb, you will understand why. Molly’s father acted the opposite of Abuelo, taking his life rather than giving it. The story that follows is Molly’s search for reconciliation. “Dos Oruguitas” taps into this longing. In the context of the movie, it is a song about betrothed love, paternal love, sacrificial love, confession, reconciliation, and restoration—personal, familial, and communal. Ultimately it’s a song about theosis.

Something has shaken loose with this song. Full confession: I have been battling a stubborn case of writer’s block. I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself to finish the next book of the series, motivated largely by a desire to please others. Only yesterday I was saying to my husband that I wasn’t having fun with it, that I had lost something fundamental. Last night’s Encanto viewing restored it, whatever it was. Ultimately, I cannot write to please readers, or editorial, or my publisher, or even myself. I write to please God and the muses.

This emo moment couldn’t have come at a better time.

Lyrics available here.

Spanish version.

English version.

Thoughts? Contact me here.

Fiction writing is a strange process, and fiction writers, strange for it. For me, story writing is largely an analytical process of thinking through cause and effect:

If this happens, then this happens next.

If this character meets with these circumstances, how would this character react? As opposed to that character?

I always have characters A and B together. What would happen if I put A and C together? Or B and C? A and D?

The pacing of this scene is off. Where do I introduce conflict? At what rate did I build it up? Did the scene reach a crisis point?Did the character make a choice? Was their an unexpected twist as a result of that choice?

And so on. But every so often my right brain shuts up, my left brain takes over, and I'll have an unexpected and almost always dramatic emotional breakthrough that pushes the story forward in ways my right brain never anticipated.

The source of these breakthroughs also always surprises me. Once upon a time, many years and many stories ago, I had a breakthrough while typing on my computer in the middle of McDonald's Playland. I was seven months pregnant, my oldest was playing with other kids, Hootie and the Blowfish was blaring from the speakers... and my main character decided that this was the exact right moment to tell me her deepest, darkest secret.

Have you ever blubbered like a baby while typing frenetically against the backdrop of squealing kids and "Order 294!" and I only want to be with yooooo-oooo-oooo-uuuuu and that Mickey D's french fry smell? Well, I have. Just another crazy writer. Don't mind me.

I've had several of these emo moments while working on my current project. One of them came while listening to this song:

I don't follow popular music. All I know about Stubborn Love was that it hit the top of the charts some years back. My husband and I had listened to the album a few times and liked it, but I hadn't thought much about it until after I began working on my current project, in which I have a 23 year old male character who has been in love with his childhood friend for years.

Stubborn Love was the song that gave me an emotional insight into the dynamics of that kind of love.

How? Not entirely sure. Perhaps because Stubborn Love has a male protagonist. Perhaps because the lyrics speak to childhood affection and unrequited love. Perhaps because the beloved in the song is a girl on the run. Perhaps because the lover is faithful to her, regardless of the pain she causes him. Perhaps because the lover is, in fact, stubborn.

All these dynamics are at play in my story. But only when I happened to hear the song again, about four chapters into the story process, did I have the cathartic moment that allowed me to understand my character.

Of all things to help me understand the emotional workings of an eighteenth century man... contemporary folk pop rock.

As I said before, don't mind me. Just another crazy writer.