From Pandemic Isolation to Magic: Creating The Ordinary Bruja

Magic doesn't always arrive with a flash and fanfare. Sometimes it emerges quietly from our darkest moments, when we're hiding from the world and even from ourselves.

During the silence of pandemic lockdown, when the world outside my window fell eerily still, I found myself drawn to create something that could bridge the isolation. That's when Marisol—a curvilicious Latina bruja reluctant to leave her cottage after quarantine—first whispered her story to me. What began as simple Instagram story posts soon became something deeper, a mirror reflecting my own fears about reconnection and being truly seen.

Through writing Marisol's journey, I discovered parts of myself I had been avoiding: feelings of inadequacy, of not being Dominican enough, brave enough, or simply good enough. The magic I wove into her story wasn't about wands or spells, but something ancestral and gut-deep, magic that pulses through her blood whether she wants it or not. Much like creativity pulsed through me during those difficult days, demanding expression even when I felt most ordinary.

The Ordinary Bruja emerged not from careful plotting but from raw emotion, from a tired woman sitting at her kitchen table whispering stories into the digital void, hoping someone might hear and respond. And respond they did—readers connected with Marisol's reluctance to emerge from her pandemic cocoon, her fear of being seen for who she truly is. Because aren't we all, in some way, hiding parts of ourselves from the world?

What version of yourself did you meet during isolation? What magic might you be hiding? Join me next Wednesday for "The Post That Broke Me" as I continue unpacking how this soft story took a hard turn after one Instagram comment about Dominican identity that awakened the bruja's anger. Your own magic is waiting—sometimes we just need someone else's story to help us find it.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Have a Cup of Johnny
• 0:38 The Birth of a Bruja Story
• 1:37 Marisol: Emerging From Pandemic Isolation
• 6:59 Writing Through Passion and Discovery
• 10:43 The Genesis of Ordinary Bruja
• 18:34 Next Week: The Post That Broke Me

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh we could, we could fly. Welcome back to have a Cup of Johnny. This season isn't about hustling harder. It's about coming home to yourself, to your voice, to your breath, to the quiet truth that you're still here and you're not starting over. You're starting again. This is your space to reflect, reset and remember who to tell you why. So pour your cafecito and let's begin.

Speaker 1: 0:38

You know, I never planned to write a bruja story, but then again, I never planned to be this version of myself either. This very first Wednesday of May, we're kicking off a new podcast series called the why Behind the Bruja, and each week in May, I'll be unpacking the roots of my novel, the Ordinary Bruja, not just how it came to be, but why I had to write it. So are we ready? Of course we are, because why would we be here? Let's go all right. So let me paint a picture for you all. It's 2020 pandemic lockdown. I am running out of things to do and I get like an inkling of I need to write, I need to be creative. I also started doing home workouts and then all this other stuff to kind of get outside of this space that I was in during that time, and then I also saw other creatives just putting themselves out there on Instagram and I believe I either heard someone say this in one of the many chats that I was part of or saw it, but it was instant story, which were stories pushed through serialized versions on Instagram stories and they were like hashtag instant stories. So I was like I want to do that. I want to do something short yet serialized, that brings me joy to create and brings other people joy to read and experience, especially since most of us were hanging out in some sort of social media space.

Speaker 1: 2:53

And you know, it was kind of like this internalized chaos going around that time where it's like the world was kind of aloof and silent but at the same time there was a lot of things going on. There was just a lot of suffering going on, unknown anxiety and all this stuff just all together. But then when you look outside it was like silent, right, you barely saw anyone. At least that was my experience. So it was this constant weight on my chest, and not the poetic kind, but it was kind of like this tired, some breathing, kind of like just being disconnected from everyone, to include myself. So, with all of that weighing on me and having this thought that I need to create in order to be fulfilled.

Speaker 1: 3:51

I've always known that, and now I was challenging myself, based on this information that I got about instant stories, that I should be able to channel the talent that I have, what I love to do, into this medium, here and and when I accepted that, then my next hurdle was like what then? What can we talk about? And, and I don't know, I don't remember how it came to me it was probably during a shower moment or something like that, as it usually happens in the shower driving. But back then I wasn't really driving because we wasn't going outside, so it had to have been in the shower. And I was thinking about what would it be like when all of this was over?

Speaker 1: 4:40

Right, when the quarantine was over, we were able to get out of the house and I just had this vision of this Latina bruja you know curvilicious Latina bruja, full curls, just coming out of this cottage on the hill which she's been holding up on. She is grieving Her mother had died, she had lost friends, as a lot of us went through that grieving of losing people that we love, but also losing connection as well. So she's coming out kind of like this alien, just really not connected to anything, but being connected to the earth, the sun shining on her, the ground she was walking on and all of that, but not really connected to her community or to the world. And little by little I got to know this bruja and I got to know that she was Marisol, who was eating comfort food and avoiding people, something that I was doing and Marisol didn't want to emerge from her pandemic cocoon.

Speaker 1: 6:04

To be completely honest, you know she didn't want to emerge from her pandemic cocoon. To be completely honest, you know she didn't want to do it. It was like a mixture of anxiety, of having to reconnect again, having to people again, and being fearful of the what if? You know, what if she was not careful and she came across somebody you know and um and herded them or pass something onto them and and all of that. So it was like so many worries, so many fears that waited on her that she was hiding and while she could come out, she was still anxious about it, you know. So, essentially, she was hiding from the world even when she could get out, and she was hiding from the world even when she could get out and she was hiding from her reflection because a lot of things had changed within her, not just outside in her world, so she hadn't come to face those things just yet. So the idea of being seen for Marisol was really anxiety ridden. She was very scared of that, and in real life so was I.

Speaker 1: 7:08

So, like I said before, when I write and I tap into these characters, I tap into me as well, into my experiences, feelings that I have had, things that I've experienced and so forth, which is why I tend to get the comment that my stories and my characters are very realistic, even though it is a fictional story the Ordinary Ruja is very fantastical. None of those things are real. But the feelings and the characters and the things that they go through are very real because I felt them and I add those, I link them, I interlace them into the story and into what the characters are feeling. So each day I wrote a little more and I found out very quickly that the canvas for the Insta story is kind of small. So it really challenged me to really condense that quote unquote chapter or that quote unquote really small episode that would fit into the screen and really pack a punch, you know and leave whoever was reading it or listening to it really salivating for more. So it was a bit of a challenge for me. Around that same time as well, I started writing on Wattpad.

Speaker 1: 8:25

So I've said before, if you go in there you're going to see some of my earlier writings and I haven't put it down. And I don't want to put it down because I love that beginning side of me. I love the passion that went into those stories. I love to see that because to me that's kind of like my genesis of writing and it shows me how much my writing has evolved while still having that core there, that passion there, that essence that is me still there, which you can see from then until now. But it's just the technicality of the writing has really evolved. I have learned and become more self-aware of things that I can do better and with each book, with each story, I have improved on that little by little. Because it is true, the more that you write, the better that you get at it. So that's the reason why if you look on Wattpad, you're going to see all my stories in there, and if you do, let me know what you think about them. And if you go into my stories on Instagram. You're going to see the Insta story of the Ordinary Bruja there as well. Yeah, each day I wrote a little bit more, and the story of the ordinary bruja there as well. Yeah, each day I wrote a little bit more and the story unfolded.

Speaker 1: 9:39

Back then, like I am now, I was a discovery writer, which means that as I write, I get to know the character more, I get to evolve the story more, and so forth, and just something about it felt super right, like I was able to exhale. Like doing that, giving back in that creative way to others was also nurturing my soul, you know, when it comes to this story, when it comes to exercising my creative muscle during that time because when it comes to Marisol, she was ordinary, you know much like how I felt, but she also had magic. She was magic, you know, and even though she didn't want to use it, it pulsed inside of her anyways. And that's when I realized I was like shoot, that's me. I was like shoot, that's me. You know, she was hesitant, she was guarded, she was soft in places the world wanted her to be hard. She was afraid of being seen for who she really was, because that meant giving people the chance to reject her, and that is hard. That right there hit way too close to home for me.

Speaker 1: 10:57

But Marisol's story kind of became my way of working through that which I didn't have the words for just yet my own fear, my own internalized shame, my own belief that I wasn't enough, not Dominican enough, not brave enough, not good enough. So I wrote and each post, like I said, was short, was like a challenge how can I make it cliffhanger-ish? That sounded bad Cliffhanger-ish and layered in this soft magic and magical realism in it and that wands or wizard magic, which I love, that you know. I don't see nothing wrong with it. But that's not what I wanted for the Ordinary Bruja. I wanted something ancestral, something old, something that just lives in her blood, that is something that gets passed down. That is aching. That is like this gut-deep magic. That is something that gets passed down. That is aching. That is like this gut-deep magic.

Speaker 1: 11:55

And readers responded, some people read it and they enjoyed it and I saw the numbers of who was reading it and how many people were reading it and liking it and that as well, kind of like not just boosted my ego and tapped into my ego, but also nourish me as well, because that's the whole point of writing, for me at least, is I want to not just see myself in what I write because it's coming from me, but I will want the readers as well to see themselves in it, so that way they may feel less alone, they may feel less awkward, they may feel less ostracized, because now there's a character there that is going through something similar, that represents a background that they have or an identity that they have, or they have the same culture as they, and so forth, you know. So that's where I get kind of like the oomph when I see that readers are connecting to something that I've written. That was also a good part of all of this and what prompted me to continue to write it. Not just that, but also write other stories, and I was like good, this is good, you know, not just because of that, but because through this story I was also starting to see myself. So you see, that's the genesis of the Ordinary Bruja, and I'm the type of writer that I have a plethora of stories.

Speaker 1: 13:29

Some are just a sentence, some are just the title of it, others are like full on first drafts vomit drafts, as I call them and I have so many of them and at any moment when I'm like almost finished with one, I go through this Rolodex of stories that I already have and tap into any one of them and start rewriting it. And I have not run out of any of those stories. I have not had the need to create anything new because I already have so many to work off of. Because all these years before I started writing seriously I want to say six years ago I've been writing through just passion. Passion was what fueled me before and I was just writing just to write whatever and a lot of those things from way back when I've come to find out that they're kind of timeless. They still hold some weight right now, right now, and all I have to do is continue to write it, to mold it, that story, and develop it a little bit more, and they have turned out to be books, just like the Ordinary Bruja, just like another series that I'll be working on after I'm done with the Ordinary Bruja, mrs French's Evil Ring I don't know if y'all heard me.

Speaker 1: 14:51

That was like 20 drafts at the very least. It was a story written a while back and it was something that I just kept rehashing, rehashing, rehashing and going through different versions until it became the final version that I published. So these stories that you see, I had had them in my drive for quite a long time had them in my drive for quite a long time and, for whatever reason, witches have always been kind of like in my purview, in my kind of like rear view mirror always. So it was always something that I've used. That motif per se of witches, of ancestral magic, of some sort of magical power, has been something that I use in my main characters a lot. So I have quite a few of those. But I want y'all to read this new version of the Ordinary Bruja, because I'm just giving you the genesis right now.

Speaker 1: 15:50

That didn't come from a book idea or from a writing retreat. I didn't plot it. It didn't come from my Scribner file. It literally came from my Instagram stories and I had to copy and paste it into my Scribner app so that way I can start from there Like no joke, that's exactly what I did. I went back into my Instagram stories, copy and paste it, because that's how I was back then. I was just. Every day I will wake up and I'm like what am I going to write? And I was just every day I will wake up and I'm like, what am I going to write? And, straight up, just wrote it in there and went on, you know, posted it On the next day. I will write again, and so forth.

Speaker 1: 16:32

So when it came time to fleshing it out as a whole book, I had to go back to the and I think that's what was holding me up for the longest, because I've been wanting to do this for so long to revisit that story now that some time have passed and I'm kind of like have already healed not fully from that, but healed enough where I can look at that and not feel the sting of everything that I experienced back then. And that's usually how it works, like I write something in the moment where I'm feeling big feelings and then I just leave it there in the background, you know, because I don't want to process it any longer. And then, when time passed and I'm able to look back at that time and I can process it again, I just pull that story again, like I did with the Ordinary Bruja, and go through it and then make it into an actual book. But yeah, no plotting, no, nothing, just a tired, overstimulated Dominican woman sitting in my kitchen table, sometimes in my living room, with the TV in the background, just whispering her story into the void, hoping that someone would read it and echo it back. And it did. The Ordinary Bruja was born out of my isolation and she reminded me that there's still power in being ordinary, that even in hiding we're still worthy of our own magic. And if you're still with me, I want to say thank you. Thank you for listening to this genesis of the ordinary Ruja.

Speaker 1: 18:13

And next week I'll be sharing the moment when this soft little story took a hard left turn After one Instagram comment, back again on Instagram on Dominican Identity thing, and that's when the bruja got angry, literally, and on the page. So tune in for episode two, the post that broke me. And if this episode touched you, you liked it, go ahead and DM me or tag me at HaveACoupleJoani and tell me what part of yourself did you meet during the pandemic, because maybe, just maybe, that version of you has magic too. All right, folks, have an awesome week and I will see you next Wednesday. Bye, if today's episode spoke to you, share with somebody who's finding their way back too, and if you haven't yet. Visit haveacupofjoanniecom for more stories, blog posts and the bits that started it all. Thank you for being here. Until next time, be soft, be bold and always have a cup of jun.