FOLLOW THE THREAD

one year of writing, listening, and following threads

It’s been exactly one year since I joined Substack. I almost quit a dozen times.

Not in an overwrought, pull-the-plug-on-everything way. It was much more subtle. The “maybe this isn’t it.” The “maybe I’m not it.” The “who am I to call myself a writer and write a book?” The slow erosion and self-criticism that happens when a project stretches longer than your confidence.

For a year, I’ve been following a thread.

That’s what creativity feels like to me. A thread. Thin. Easy to lose. Impossible to force. You don’t control it. You listen for it. You notice where it pulls. You respect where it knots and frays. Some days the thread disappears. Or it leads you somewhere unwelcoming, somewhere inconvenient. Somewhere that asks more of you than you planned to give.

That’s when resistance shows up. Abandon it. This is total shit. Surely this will fail. Start something else. Call it discernment. Pretend you were never that invested.

But the work does not respond to will. It does not respond to you wrangling it into submission. It responds to attention. Listening is the discipline. Respecting the process is the initiation. And not giving up, especially when no one is paying attention, is the art.

Yesterday, I finally sent my upcoming book, a lyrical memoir titled Flecks of Gold: A Year of Living Artfully to my editor.

It exists because I kept following the thread. It exists because I kept listening. Because I did not quit.

I do not know where this wild, winding road is taking me. All I know is I am supposed to follow the thread and see it through. Sometimes creativity is as simple as that. It asks us to make art for the sake of making it. Not to arrive somewhere. Not to prove something to someone. Not to secure an outcome. But because something inside us insists.

The making itself is the point.

Sometimes you have to let that be enough.

If you are in the middle of something, my friend, something that feels longer than your certainty, stay with it. Your only job is not to let go of the thread.

The world so desperately needs the voice and art of creatives right now.

Keep following the thread. Keep living artfully.

Thank you for being on this journey with me,
xx
Alana

© Alana Foy 2026