When Plans Shift…and What Carries You Through

There’s a certain comfort in having a plan.

Timelines mapped out. Milestones accounted for. The next step already in motion before you’ve even reached it.

When I began preparing for the next phase of this series, I thought I had done exactly that. I had an editor lined up well in advance, with the intention of moving firectly from beta reader feedback into the next stage of refinement. It felt organized. Intentional. On track.

And then, unexpectedly, everything paused.

Communication stopped. Days passed. Then more. At first, it felt like a delay. Then it became clear something else might be going on. Eventually, I learned that the editor I had been working with had been hospitalized. It wasn’t something anyone could have anticipated, and for a while, there was simply uncertainty. No clear timeline. No immediate next step. More than anything, I hoped she was ok. It would have been easy, in that moment, to feel stuck. To wait indefinitely. To try to force a solution. Or to assume that the timeline I had in mind was no longer possible.

Instead, I reached out.

Not broadly. Not strategically. Just honestly. To a community of women - writers, editors, publishers - who understand what it means to build something like this. People who know the rhythm of the work, the pressure of timelines, and the reality that someimes, things don’t go according to plan.

The response was immediate.

Support. Recommendations. Willingness to help in ways that went beyond obligation. And through that, I found someone who was able to step in and help keep things moving forward. It wasn’t how I planned it. But in many ways, it worked exactly as it needed to.

Moments like that are a reminder that while planning matters, it’s not what carries you through when things shift. People do. Community does. The relationships you build along the way, often quietly and without expectation, become the very thing that allows you to keep moving when something unexpected happens.

It also reinforces something else that can be easy to forget: knowing when to ask for help isn’t a disruption to the process; it’s part of it.

Especially in creative work, where so much of what we do can feel independent, self-driven, and internal. It’s easy to believe we’re meant to carry everything ourselves. But we’re not. And more often than not, the right support shows up when we’re willing to acknowledge that we need it.

So while this wasn’t part of the original plan, it became something just as valuable. A reminder that even when things pause, the work doesn’t stop.

It simply finds another way forward.