Weekly Writing Prompt: The Tarot
PLUS: Day Long Retreat on August 9 and a Pinky Promise
Not to sound like a broken record, but I really want you to join me for this next in person writing retreat at Cityspace Easthampton on August 9th, a Saturday, from 10am - 6pm. There will be prompts, comfy spaces to write, light snacks, and verbally hype-up feedback for folks who want to share about 500 words of what they work on throughout the day at the end of our time together. If you want to add on a 30 minute coaching session with me while you’re there, you can do that for an extra $50. Look for the option to add that on when you register! I’d love to have you! I hope you can come. Use this button below to sign up. You can come for a half day if that works better for you! Just message me and we’ll suss that out.
Prompt: Finding Story Arc with the Tarot
Pals, I love the Tarot. It’s beautiful. It’s mystical. It’s widely misunderstood. The cards can create approximations of endless variations of different stories. Just a dream. It’s a great tool for writing prompts.
This week I was honored to attend beloved Book Buddy Rachel’s (whose Substack is witchy AF and AMAZING) MFA graduation lecture about using the tarot as an aid in writing. It was, unsurprisingly, brilliant and loads of fun. In honor of this, I’m resurrecting an old prompt using the tarot. I hope you like it!
I love Jane Friedman’s blog. She writes often about the business aspect of being a writer, and has lots of posts about writing craft that I find to be super clear and helpful. In this one, a guest writer talks about using the tarot to help you envision a story arc. Arcs happen across genre. In both fiction and nonfiction we begin with a person we invest in emotionally, then something happens to them that pushes them to change in some way, and then they come out the other side slightly or hugely different. Poetry is often a rumination about the experience of changing, it’s just that the modality of telling about the change is stylized and different. This blog post recommends using a spread where the first card is symbolic of the core person the story or poem is about, the second is symbolic of what the writer calls the climax but for our purpose we’ll just call it the nature of the change or the energy that moves the piece, and the last is the final outcome. You can read about it here: https://www.janefriedman.com/tell-your-story-with-3-tarot-cards/
Use the suggested arc to construct a poetic narrative, a nonfiction essay or scene or fictional story scene. Or try just looking at the images and writing from there. You can use the spreads as symbolic of three acts: the first act is the first spread so involves a few scenes, the second act is the second spread and so on.
First spread:
The Lovers: someone who feels balanced and loved/ a partnership/someone facing a choice between two paths/someone in need of more harmony in their lives
7 of wands: is faced with a situation where there is competition, where they have to defend themselves, or there is a threat of something being taken from them or great loss
10 of swords: The result is complete loss/exhausted defeat that calls for intense recovery. The hero here does not win a conventional way but is forced into a bottoming out that results in a loss but a new beginning
Spread 2:
3 of wands: someone who is looking to future and has planned ahead meticulously
7 of swords: lies, corruption, sneaky behavior, or betrayal creates the change
Ace of cups: results in something new or unexpected - so here the best laid plans are thwarted to make space for something else.
Spread 3:
3 of pentacles: someone who is deeply entrenched in a business or personal partnership with another person. They are dependent, and if the partnership dissolved it would cause suffering
Two of pentacles: something threatens the balance of finances creating economic instability and crisis/the feeling that there is too much to juggle
Tower: partnership collapses, total scorched earth, huge life upheaval, clean slate sort of change
OR if you have your own deck, pull your own cards and see how you feel about them then write from there!
A Pinky Promise
Next week, I will write to you about flashbacks, I swear it. AND I’m almost done with Chimamanda Adiche Ngozi’s new one, Dream Count, so I’ll tell you all about ways you might use that to help with your writing project when I’m done. I pinky promise.
July 30 is Book Club - it’s a Wednesday, 7-8:30.
You’re the bee’s knees.
More soon.
Your bestie -
Kate