Help! How Should I Embark on an Unfamiliar Genre Journey?

In the second installment of our Tarot + Craft column, Sarah Elaine Smith gives advice to a writer who is considering exploring a new genre

Dear Braindoggies,

My writing impulses as of late have tended toward confessional and digging in the muck of myself. Most of my old mentors eschewed personal writing as taboo and believed memoir is just for celebrities and people of “real” accomplishment. Or more succinctly: I’m afraid to do this, even if it’s just for myself. What is a good way to embark on an unfamiliar genre journey that has been something you’ve previously thought wasn’t right for you?

Wandering

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THE SPREAD

You: ​King of Wands

The Problem: Seven of Cups

The Ideal Outcome: ​Two of Wands

The Advice: ​Four of Cups

The Mood: The Emperor

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Dear Wandering,

I can tell that the authority of mentors is a big part of this question—and with good reason. When we learn about the world, we have only two resources at hand: the evidence of our senses and the advice of our mentors. This is true when we’re children learning about the world through our families—after all, what is parenting except a long mentorship which ideally covers everything from walking to making a proper funeral casserole? And it’s true when we’re discovering how to maneuver in the writing world too. We learn a great deal through sensation and personal experience, but we also receive the laws of the land through knowledgeable practitioners who offer us a shortcut.

The only problem? Often our mentors condition us to disregard the evidence of our senses when that evidence contradicts theirs. Think back to every time someone told you “that’s just the way it is,” and you’ll see how these directives take up tremendous space in our sense of the world and who we’re allowed to be. (In complete innocence, of course—their own mentors told them to disregard their senses too.) And often, directives about what we can write about tacitly endorse the idea of a default consciousness, one that is white, male, wealthy, cis, and able-bodied. If we don’t exactly match that default, our writing can be labeled taboo before we even put a word on the page.

In this spread, you are the King of Wands. Wands are the suit of fire, creativity, and passion, and the court cards exemplify growing mastery of that particular form of power, increasing in self-confidence and stewardship. The king and queen of the suit aren’t just able practitioners of creative power but also leaders in the equitable use of power and possibility. You are a skilled artist. You have already achieved a fluency with your creative work which is only possible through experience and perceptive acuity. Your willingness to trust your gut and take your work in a new direction is a sign of leadership all on its own.

As you grow in new directions, fear is quite understandable. You don’t know what you’ll find in your writing once you dig further into your personal lived experience; you might find something muddy, inconsequential, embarrassing. The Seven of Cups is all about the twin possibility of dream and illusion: like something from a fairy tale, golden goblets float within reach, bearing shimmering promises and dangerous beasties. Often, this card is read with a sort of cautionary spin. Which one will you choose? What if the dream dissolves right before you? Or, in this case, what will happen if your confessional writing reveals something taboo?

That’s the way your mentors might caution you to approach the offerings of dream and illusion. If you think it’s possible to make a wrong choice, the endless tides of possibility and fluidity present a problem. Digging in the muck is only a problem if you’re under the impression that you’re supposed to find something the way a person of “real” accomplishment might.

The Two of Wands represents the ideal outcome, showing you a lush landscape with a blank sky. A white sky can be bright but intimidating. Some of the possibilities are visible and some are unwritten, completely up to you. The wands are like walking sticks; if you know how to hold them, the excitement of creative passion can actually stabilize you.

The ideal outcome is absolutely a journey of some kind, but it doesn’t have to be one you undertake without any sense of guidance. You’re holding a globe, which confers the benefits of a map, a known world, a way home. The globe is just a representation of the world—but it can still be useful. Even if your mentors held some limited ideas about the value of personal writing, you still get to consult the aggregate of their wisdom in other ways.

WHAT TO DO

Pick up what’s already been handed to you. While you sit there under a tree thinking about all this, the cosmic non-dual entity of creative prosperity is offering you a big fizzy ice cream soda. Take it! Take it! Replace ambivalence with decision. And know, too, that your decisions never have to be permanent. What’s right for you now may change in a few months. What was right for you before may come around again or never again. The paradox of choice is that it is definite and impermanent in equal measure: If you want a new experience or to return to a previous one, all you have to do is choose it.

The best way to embark on a journey is to simply choose a direction and go with it for at least a little while. You can turn back whenever you like. You will certainly change, but home will be right where you left it.

How appropriate that the Emperor is the mood of this question; you have been handed down someone else’s set of rules, rules which are essentially in place “because I said so.” But you’re stepping out of someone else’s authority and into your own. Under your own authority, you get to keep the helpful lessons and throw out the silly ones. Maybe the day isn’t here just yet, but soon you’ll be a mentor yourself.

WRITING PROMPT

The Chariot

The Chariot has been coming up frequently in my deck, whether in readings for myself or for others (including in this column last month). Something must be going on! Take heart from that; you aren’t the only one learning to assimilate seemingly disparate paths and parts of your nature.

Anyway, what’s good writing? Ask yourself and make a list. What does it do? How can you tell it when you see it? And ask yourself: What’s bad writing? Make a list.

And now that you’ve made your lists . . . What’s bad about good writing? (It imposes an external valuation, requires a stable default/center? Too many poems about bees and the sea and Marcona almonds? Dulls out minor distinction in a flood of imagery and dependent clauses?) And what’s good about bad writing? (Fast, rude, and portable? Better at offending those who ought to be offended? Self-defense? Bathroom graffiti? Words for the people on TV to say?) Repeat and continue until you feel better about everything.

MUSIC AND POETRY Rx

“Becoming X” by Sneaker Pimps

Rollerderby by Lisa Crystal Carver

xxx

Braindoggies

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Thanks for reading, and welcome to this column! Each installment addresses a craft question with a tarot spread and interpretation.

I know that “craft” usually means diction or dialogue or some other mechanical aspect, but here’s the thing: Writing is actually the art of risk. It’s a risk to write anything down, a risk to let anyone read it, and a risk to say what you really want to say.

As such, there are lots of little wars we all have to fight on our way to the blank page, not to mention the doubts and fears we battle when we get there.

Do you have a question for Braindoggies? We would love to hear it! Please send your writing conundrum to Eliza Harris at eliza.harris@catapult.co with the subject line, “Dear Braindoggies”