Hey friends!
1 💕 Workshop rec
I recently finished up a 6-week generative workshop called Emotional Historians. It’s facilitated by a poet named Jon Sands (@iamjonsands on insta, ⬅️ the link in his bio sends you to a form to get on the waitlist). Please allow me to rave about it for a second. EH is consistently a joy to attend. You do a check in, a free write. Then there’s a bit of poem discussion followed by super prompts. I think of these prompts as accordions, because there are so many options. He layers them in a way that you will grasp hold of something, there will be an emotional attachment, so you always have a starting point that is personal and highly charged.
Now, I haven’t been to school in a minute. Nor do I plan to soon. But this last EH cycle really reminded me of something I had forgotten about myself.
One thing about me is I probably won’t do the reading beforehand.
I refuse to shame myself for this. This is both an act of defiance and faith. I have stopped chiding myself about it and instead allow myself to relax into the readings. I find that my initial reactions upon hearing a poem are phenomenal fodder for writing my own. It’s a very piscean approach. No regrets.
2 💕 Mercury Rx Reflection
Cheat Sheet Keywords
- Mercury: mind, communication
- Aries: cardinal, fire, action, courage, desire
Mercury was retrograde basically all of April 2024. It was retrograde in Aries, during Aries season. 🌀👄🌀 It was also eclipse season. So if April felt like a doozy to you, take what you will from that.
I have gone on record to say that retrogrades aren’t scary. I think writers should embrace it opportunistically. Mercury has so much to do with moving information back and forth. It’s a great time to tweak things, spruce things up.
I am a Scorpio rising with a 6th house Aries. 6H stuff is about work. Things like service, skills, and the environment which those things thrive in. So, armed with the knowledge that Mercury’s dance was going to affect work-type things, I put some focus on cleaning up my inboxes. Typically a Mercury retrograde brings us some insight. Much like the idea that when we review something thoroughly we are rewarded.
During my inbox endeavor I found pages of work I had forgotten writing. My current WIP is a fantasy fiction that begins with the MC as a tween. These pages were at a point in the timeline 20 years in her future as a side character. A future I had forgotten because the work developed differently. 10,000 words of it. It was like reading multiverse scene of my own work and I can’t describe how cool it was.
3 💕 Now Watching
I recently binged The Last of Us and rewatched House of the Dragon and enjoyed both way more than I thought I would. I am enthralled with fungi, how they operate and what we can learn from them, so the premise of The Last of Us tickles me. I’m going to need to talk about it at some point.
I've been on Jon Sands' email list forever and have yet to actually sign up for the EH workshop! I'm glad you mentioned it. I'll have to actually participate in one of the next rounds.