The age-old saying goes, “Think outside the box.” But first we must have a box to think outside of.

Is our box more of a literal box we throw different things in for differing reasons? Or is it more of a mental box in the far corners of our brain? For some it might even be both.

So what’s in our box? For me, I have boxes for tax related stuff. Shoe boxes with shoes, sometimes. While others I use as a temporary storage facility for whatever is around at the time. Then I have them for my crafting stuff like sewing, cross stitch, yarn, scrapbooking, and much more. Sometimes they are just miscellaneous with what is found to get it out-of-the-way. But these are the physical type.

The mental boxes store all kinds of things. For me, one of my boxes has what happened to Mari. It’s a box that can be easily infiltrated simply by a memory or a sound. When I was writing her book, it’s kind of like I was stuck in the box. The book that I thought was okay didn’t seem to be working for others. I thought for sure it would as it felt like I’d poured my heart and soul into it. But then it dawn on me. By keeping myself in that box I wasn’t able to show what needed to be shown. I needed to look and think outside that box to come up with the perfect story about Mari.

And then it hit me. I needed to take Her Hospital Story and turn it into a full length book. Be creative with it so the reader understood emotionally what we went through during that time.

It took taking a moment to step away from the box to realize that outside that box was the real story.