Jun 29, 2017 | Tarot for Writers, The Writing Life, Writing Advice
We are living in a time of reversals, losses. There are political shifts, yes, but also very immediate human suffering, both on the incomprehensible level of war, aggression, terror, refugees, exclusion, and brutality, and also the personal level of the individual. As writers, we are empaths, and speaking only for this one writer, I admit that sometimes this loss, this suffering, derails me and leaves me unable to write. But this is also our material, and our calling: to render the human condition in all its complexity.
So my burning question for today is:
How do we deal with loss?
As you may know, if you have been following this blog, to find my answers, I pull a single Tarot* card. I use it for insight, as a confirmation, to get around my blocks and habits, to take some risks and find some epiphanies. Often, it gives me an energy that I need to hold onto, so I put it on my altar. Today’s card is The World Shining Woman.
The Card: In this deck, the World Shining Woman is the final card in the Major Arcana. She is the culmination of the journey of life: wholeness, the perfect being. Inside her body, all the pieces of creation, all the stories, the dreams, everything we imagine and call into being. This is a card of fulfillment, but it also draws on the Kaballah story that the original cosmos was broken into pieces and now all of us bear the responsibility of restoring it to wholeness.
So what does this card mean for you, as the writer?
There is no life without loss.
There are two ways to approach this card. One is as a writer in the world who is experiencing some kind of loss that you are finding difficult to get on the page (or perhaps you are finding it difficult to get to the page period).
For this, the card reminds us that wholeness requires it all: the light hand and the dark hand, the hermaphrodite (as the World card is often rendered), the soul of the fish, the endurance of the turtle, the tomb, and the cross. As empaths, we need our wound-raw sensitivity, and our courage in the face of it, in order to do our jobs. We need to feel, and sometimes this is hard but it is the essence of the writer’s voice and the writer’s role in society, culture and community.
The second approach is to think about the content of what you are writing. How do you connect to the losses in your story, and render them? How do you bring truth to deep emotions without being melodramatic or too abstract? What if you are too close (as is sometimes the case in memoir)? How do you find the balance?
For this, I look, not at the figure, but at the space around her. As Rachel Pollack, who created the image writes, “She dances in the void.” Rachel draws our attention to the “second body” of white space between the World Shining Woman’s body and the lines of energy in the corners of the card. She reminds us that everything creates an echo, a halo of “inexpressible mystery.” And sometimes the best way to describe something is to describe its halo. Or, that the body is only one aspect of the perfect being, and the spirit or soul, the intangible, is greater than what we think we know.
How can you apply this card to your work?
Loss is sacred, and essential to life. Feel the feels.
My exercise offering is the same whether you need grounding as a writer grappling with loss, or are looking for a technique to render it. Use this as you see fit.
First, find a quiet place that feels safe and is meaningful to you. Look around you. Take your time. Select an object in your space that calls you and pick it up.
Sit with it for a second, maybe with your eyes closed. Feel the weight of it in your hand; the temperature, the texture. Feel whether it changes as it acclimates to your skin. Let your mind drift and see whether, just with this connection to your body, images come. Write down a few notes if you want, then keep going.
Open your eyes if you like. Use your other senses to connect to the object. Give yourself space to make associations. Is there another object in the room that wants to connect to this one? A person? Is there a place where this object belongs? Comes from? Is there a desire associated with it? An emotion?
Let yourself make notes and associations. Keep them as close as possible with your senses. If you find that the object, and the associations and the stories that are beginning to form around it, are connected to your feelings or your loss, that will help you explore it and experience it from a safe place. If it takes you to a different emotion, that’s good too. Maybe that lifts you out of your block, your overwhelm. Maybe it reminds you that everything is a cycle, is in flow. And loss is just one awful, beautiful, human part of that cycle. All of this is helpful to enrich your material and get you writing again.
Wishing you inspiration.
*In this feature, I’m working with The Shining Tribe Tarot: Awakening the Universal Spirit, created by renowned Tarot scholar Rachel Pollack, who taught me that the Tarot “is a vehicle to remind yourself of what you already know.” If you want to know more about the deck and its images, or have your own Tarot practice, here are the links.
Jun 17, 2017 | Tarot for Writers, The Writing Life, Writing Advice
Every day, I work with writers. From those who are just starting out, gathering their thoughts and looking for tools, to those who have been published. Right now, I am sending off my last letters of advice to my MFA students at Goddard College, and I am also trying to work on my own final revisions of my upcoming novel. Which reminds me that this week’s question is not one that a writer ever outgrows. Nor is it limited to any particular stage of the process, or even to writing. As you will see, this is a question for all artists and creative thinkers.
Today’s tarot question:
How do we go deeper?
To find my answers, I pull a single Tarot* card. I use it for insight, as a confirmation, to get around my blocks and habits, to take some risks and find some epiphanies. Often, it gives me an energy that I need to hold onto, so I put it on my altar. Today’s card is 7 of Rivers.
The Card: In this deck, the suit of Rivers is for feelings, dreams and fantasies. An emotional suit, it is rooted in love and harmony, and reminds us that the easiest way (as in “ease”!) to get where we are going is to go with the flow. The 7 in every suit stands for daring and communication. The 7 of Rivers is the card of fantasy, and wondrous journeys.
So what does this card mean for you, as the writer?
Don’t just go deeper. Let yourself go crazy!
This card is about the imagination, about the storyteller letting images float up from the unconscious. In that way, it’s a very direct answer. But sometimes the cards work by reminding me of a message that is already in the air. So let me tell you a story.
I am surrounded by artists. My sons are dancers and musicians; my partner is a potter; my father is a writer; and my step-mother is a painter and textile artist. So we talk about art a lot. Recently, one of my sons was in California working with a mentor on his choreography, and they were discussing freestyling, and, in particular, what to do when you find yourself following your habits and your strengths, and therefore doing the same thing over and over again. One school of thought might be to do the opposite, or to move your feet more if you are relying too much on your hands. This dance mentor’s advice was, if you find yourself stomping on your left foot over and over, go with it. Play with it. Make it bigger, then bigger still, then bring it back. Make it weirder.
In other words, don’t pull yourself away from your inclinations. Trust that your habit has something to offer, maybe a safe place where you know you are strong, that will give you the courage to tip over the edge and find the unknown.
Besides inspiration and wild stories, the 7 of Rivers also reminds us that too many fantasies or possibilities can be paralyzing. How do you choose? Which are the right choices? Are there any to be feared? This aspect of the card convinces me that the advice from the freestyling dancer is the right message here, because it recommends that you build off your strengths. When you are in front of a crowd, there is no room for fear and judgment, for telling yourself you are wrong to have habits and to throw yourself into the blank unknown. This is also true for the writer at her desk.
Be playful. Embrace your fantasies. Flow into the unknown from your strengths. Trust yourself.
How can you apply this card to your work?
Here’s one strategy for the writer who wants to go deeper. There are so many others, and I hope that this post has already given you some ideas of your own. For this one, take the piece of writing that you want to go deeper with and ask it: What if?
What if the end wasn’t the end?
What if the highs were higher, the lows lower, the stakes greater? Exaggerate them.
Look for secrets that are kept, messages that are delivered and understood, images that resolve or that we have seen before and explode them. What if one character never got the message? What happens then?
What if you admitted something (in personal essay or memoir) that makes you uncomfortable? Or vulnerable? (You can always delete it later.)
What if the resolutions didn’t resolve?
We tend to work within the safe spaces, where we are comfortable, and that translates to our characters: we don’t ask more of them than we would ask of ourselves. What if you asked for everything, held nothing back? Think of this as an exercise to discover what’s on the other side of safety. You may only use a little bit of it, but your story will be deeper than it was.
Happy writing!
*In this feature, I’m working with The Shining Tribe Tarot: Awakening the Universal Spirit, created by renowned Tarot scholar Rachel Pollack, who taught me that the Tarot “is a vehicle to remind yourself of what you already know.” If you want to know more about the deck and its images, or have your own Tarot practice, here are the links.
Jun 13, 2017 | Tarot for Writers, The Writing Life, Writing Advice
Do you need help grounding your writing? Want to know why you can’t focus, or what you should be focusing on? Maybe you want to know how to go forward. What’s next? Or, if you have come to a fork in the road, how do you choose?
When I have questions like these, I pull a Tarot card. Often it’s a single card, which answers the question: What do I need to know right now? It’s been an incredibly helpful way to get around my blocks and habits, to take some risks and find some epiphanies. So in this new, biweekly feature for She Writes that I am reposting on my website here, I’ll be pulling a card for all of us in response to a question that seems timely, and then I’ll use it to offer a message for your writing life and your work. I’m working with the Shining Tribe deck, by renowned Tarot scholar Rachel Pollack* who taught me that the Tarot “is a vehicle to remind yourself of what you already know,” which seems perfect for writers. So here goes. . .
Today, I asked this question:
What do we need to remember?
The answer was the card Awakening.
The Card: Awakening is the 20th card in the major arcana: the card of transformation, of realization, and a shift in perception. This “awakening” is to the true self, without doubt. It suggests a joining with others, and responsibility. Unlike the Judgement card in the traditional Rider-Waite Tarot deck, this spirit has come for everyone. All rise!
So what does this card mean for you, as the writer?
Remember that the role of the artist is to shine the light.
What do you see when you look around you? What needs to be addressed, revealed, celebrated or transformed? Where do you see a different, or unspoken, truth? In other words, what do you need to say?
Every person has their own unique perspective, and your writing is rooted in how you experience our shared world. Remember that the role of the artist in any society is to offer that different view, to encourage us to reconsider our commonly-held beliefs so we can grow and change together. Sometimes, our art is a direct challenge; other times, an exploration, a celebration, or a dissection. Your story may be dark or painful, it may seem apolitical and personal, but as long as it is your truth, it matters. Sharing your artistic vision can literally shift the way the rest of us see.
It can also bring us together. All rise, remember? When readers encounter feelings and experiences they share in someone else’s stories, those strangers are no longer so strange. The more stories, the more truths, the more chance that they will find validation in your experiences or your imagination. So, whether you are still dreaming, or writing, or in your final edits, take some time to reconnect with what is universal in your story. Don’t forget: the people in Awakening are standing in the same pool of consciousness. Together, they lit the windows in their world.
Remember this: Do not doubt your voice, or the fact that we need it. Trust the light, and embrace your true self. Only you can tell your story.
How can you apply this card to your work?
In the coming weeks, I may give you a series of questions to ask yourself in this section, or offer you a writing prompt or exercise. My focus for your work may be different than the focus for you as a writer. I encourage you, also, to find your own connections between the card and what you are working on, and I feel quite comfortable that you will find some!
This time, I want to go back to the card, and answer today’s question very simply:
Remember to transform.
Ask yourself:
Do your characters change over the course of their experiences?
Is everyone safe and the same in the end?
Do you have enough twists in the plot?
Is your reader pretty sure, right from the beginning, that she knows where she is going, and does she get there pretty much exactly as she expects? (If so, you need some surprises!)
Does an image in your poem allow your reader to experience something in a new way?
Does the reader change? Did you make her laugh, break her heart, teach her how to dress a wound? Will she always think of herself now as your sister?
Keep it dynamic. Keep it unique. Keep it true to your felt experience. Keep it connected to the essence of our shared humanity. I suspect that you will hear the cards repeat some of these messages in the coming weeks, just when you most need to remind yourself.
Happy writing!
*The Shining Tribe Tarot: Awakening the Universal Spirit, created by Rachel Pollack, comes with a detailed book that describes the nuances and the inspiration behind each card. If you want to know more, or have your own Tarot practice, I strongly recommend it.
