Tarot. Writing. Poetry.
Tarot is actually helping me reconnect with my writing practice. I always feel that if you are a writer, getting in touch with tarot is always going to be something natural and instinctive because as a writer you already have a deck of tarot cards inside of you. You know the archetypes and tropes of the human experience. You already know how to skillfully utilize and manifest symbolism to enhance meaning.
Engaging in on-going poetry reading helps me to get my words going. You know those moments when you open a blank Word document because you wanted to type something, like you’ve got something at the tip of your fingers and the horizon of your consciousness, but nothing is coming out? It’s like you want to write, but you don’t know what to write. Right now I don’t seem to have that problem–and I think I’ve found my way of remaining inspired.
It’s true–creativity is a machine that needs to be constantly oiled and used, and the more you use it, the better and more efficient it becomes. You can never run out of creativity because it is like an organ or a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes. It is organic and it is alive. It’s not a dead space or storage room where you go in and go out whenever you need something.
Anyway, got a bit off topic. Doing poetry readings using tarot cards is fun. I think I’ll dedicate a blog post to this practice. Basically, you draw one card (either for yourself or for a different person), and then you free-write a poem. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and you engage yourself with the card in front of you, and you channel your intuition and change it into poetic impressions. What I noticed is giving out a poetry reading allows a lot of room for interpretation. This is fun but it’s less likely to be helpful because the person reading your poetry reading can basically take on a subjective view and filter your words through their own understanding. Most of the time their understanding can border wishful thinking. Because poetic impressions are largely symbolic, it’s less about the message you want to deliver. Tarot readings are supposed to offer you insight and help you move forward in a positive way–poetry readings are more like “tarot exercises”. They’re more for fun than for self-reflection and self-improvement. You can’t really argue how your querent (the person you read for) is interpreting your “poem”, right? It’s like if you’re reading a regular poem, you can’t expect just one version of events or just one single interpretation for the group of words or images you are presented with.
I am *really* on a roll these days. I just binged three blog posts in pretty much a single day, and I just wrote 2000+ words on the short story I am working on. Staying inspired is truly important! Poetry has always been a huge part of my writing so I’m glad I found something that continuously motivates me. I’m also making a discovery about myself: I don’t think I’m much of an architect, and I’m much more of a seed grower. I grow my ideas from the get-go and I do lots of pantsing. Pantsing is fun. Usually if I spend too much time planning for my first draft, I just end up not writing the story because I’m trying to create the story based on something else. That creates so much frustration when I don’t meet the goals I set out or when my story doesn’t listen to me and take the “wrong turn”. At least for the first draft, I think I am going into full “explore” mode. Let me find the story first. Then I’ll worry about structure, character development, and all that jazz.
