🌱 Spring Rebirth and the End of Eclipse Season

May 21, 2022 12:01 pm

You're receiving this newsletter because you subscribed either at MarisaMohi.com, or by downloading The Widow of Alabaster Point, free tarot spreads, a content brainstorming workbook, or enrolling in the daily writing habit email course.

If you were concerned about my biscuits last week, don't worry. They turned out pretty dang good.

It was a triumph in a week of triumphs. Or rather, a triumph in a week of hard-fought battles with myself.

Internal battles. You know, the kind where your thoughts play on a loop and you struggle to get stuff done because you're so focused on this internal battle you're fighting with yourself?

Reader, if I were an Instagram life coach with pithy advice to dole out, I would've told myself to get out of my own way.

But I'm not. I'm Marisa. A writer and tarot reader who on the best of days has like a 3% understanding of who she is at her core. And so when the internal battles rage on, your girl is at the front lines trying to be proactive while simultaneously accepting that I won't know the reason for the war until after it's all said and done.

All that is to say that I've been really struggling with who I am lately as a writer. There used to be things that were true about me. Things I could set my watch to, so to speak.

But in the past two years, so much has shifted about who I am and how I work and what I need to do what I want to do. I feel like I've been getting stuff done, but when it comes to understanding what I actually need, I feel like Beavis and Butthead.

Let me explain.

There's this scene in Beavis and Butthead Do America where they've been kidnapped and they're locked in the trunk of a moving car. They use a car jack to pop the trunk open (yes, there is a joke about jacking off) and they stand there in the open trunk as the car barrels down the highway, looking at the road moving quickly beneath them.

Beavis expresses his concern about jumping from the trunk.

Butthead, ever the reassuring friend, says, "Come on, Beavis. Just start running really fast as soon as you hit the ground. It'll work."

Is this good advice? No.

Does it work in the context of the movie? Not even.

Is Beavis and Butthead Do America one of the best films of all time? Indisputably.

Have the past two years or so felt like I've been trying to run really fast as soon as I hit the ground? Oh my God yes.

(If you need to see a quick clip of this scene, you can check it out right here.)

Last week I sent a novel manuscript to my editor. It's the first in a series based on the major arcana of the tarot, and it's rough. So rough.

It's by no means the first novel I ever finished. In fact, I have about four novels that I've finished in the past five years that will never see the light of day. I have a few more from earlier in my life that will also never see the light of day. I have a 2004 Sony Vaio laptop that is chock-full of them. I have a 2009 black MacBook that is similarly packed.

It took me a long time to get to know my process and what I needed when writing and what kinds of stories I wanted to be known for.

Then I started this novel. And all that self-knowledge? Went straight out the window.

(Or out the open trunk of a car careening down the highway at maximum speeds.)

So it was arduous to say the least. Some writing sessions felt like they went well, and only at the end did I discover how few words I'd put on the page. Other sessions were me just sitting at my desk staring into space.

It's stupid, but it felt like there was some other entity there stopping me from writing it.

I finished it, and I know it's going to need WORK. But as with all things in life, sometimes you just have to keep bashing your head against a problem until it's solved.

I sent the manuscript off in the middle of the night just as the lunar eclipse happened. Which, like, yeah. That's a very Marisa thing to do. But honestly, as soon as it was sent off, something weird happened.

I feel good about this series. I know as soon as my editor sends me the novel back, it's going to need some hardcore work. But oddly enough, I'm excited about it. And I'm already working on the next book.

It was like I had to finish the first one, no matter what, to get to this feeling.

Oh, and like, that was a lunar eclipse in Scorpio, and Mercury, Saturn, and Pluto are all in Scorpio in my chart. So for those of you keeping score at home, I am HELLA REBORN IN A LOT OF WAYS THAT ARE PARTICULARLY RELEVANT TO THE LIFE I LEAD.

So, sometimes you have to just jump from the trunk of the moving car, gang.

Metaphorically, of course. Please don't ever do that in real life.