3 things i don't do as an author-astrologer that might surprise you

I get asked by other writers, and astrology-curious folks, frequently if I do certain things. If those things that are assumed I do make a difference. 

Here are some astro-informed things I, a professional astrologer and published author, don’t (or can’t) do. There is a mix of ethic, cost-benefit analysis, and sheer laziness involved — mostly because I am a human and I can’t do everything. I hope this helps you gives yourself permission to not do everything, too. 

please forgive the gratuitous use of good omens gifs (no s2 spoilers); i couldn’t help myself

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I don’t wait until Mercury Rx is over to sign (up for) things (or contracts)

As I have said approximately two hundred times in previous editions of this newsletter, Mercury is retrograde three times a year for roughly three weeks apiece, which makes nine weeks, or just over two months, that it’s retrograde, and I am simply not opting out of my life — and contracts, and opportunities, and paying important bills on time, and more — for more than two whole months. 

Now, will I try to avoid or be mindful of specific days when Mercury has exact oppositions or squares (really difficult astro-weather) with, say, Saturn? Yes. Will I avoid it the entire time? No. Absolutely not. 

Freewill, bitches. We all have it. 

Astrology is the weather. It’s our job to decide how we live in it.

That said, I do read contracts over for all the legalese detail several times, and make a habit of listening to podcasts that talk about industry contracts and such things. You can also have The Author’s Guild review contracts, which I strongly recommend! 

I don’t design birth charts for my characters when I’m drafting a novel

The cat is a little out of the bag that I’m back on my fiction bullshit, and consequently, I have been asked the question: do I create birth charts for my characters? 

Most emphatically, no.

My attitude about this is similar to my attitude about meeting (or, back when I was still single, dating) new people IRL: I prefer to let them reveal themselves to me slowly, over time. I don’t actually want their chart up front. I’m only interested in it once I’ve gotten to know them and made my own judgments. It’s really not helpful if I decide too early that they are too similar to an ex or former friend based on something as arbitrary as a shared Venus placement when there are so, so many other factors to consider.

pls note however that i don’t talk to my plants like crowley talks to his

One of my biggest flaws, as a person, is that I can be tremendously judgmental. Generously, you could say I’m discerning. Ungenerously, you could say I’m a bitch who never met a hill she wasn’t willing to die on. I have opinions about everything and everyone. Ask my partner Meg; they hear all of it. I often see things in black and white; appreciating the grey is a continual struggle for me. Consider it a holdover from evangelical Christianity or simply a byproduct of a stubborn, competitive personality that emerged in a firstborn daughter: either way, it’s not pretty. When it comes to astrology, at least, I am aware of my propensity to judge things before giving them a chance — aware of just how easily I could use this practice as a blunt instrument of destruction rather than as a tool for devotion and healing. 

And so, for me, the personality-typing, pop-psychology style of astrology that has become the norm these days has little appeal. I foreground freewill in part because of my extreme religious background that told me, for decades, I had none, and in part because I simply do not — can not — believe that I can see everything there is to see about a person in their natal chart. 

like, an angel and a fallen-angel-demon falling in love with each other: give characters like this room to spring shit on you

I want to give my characters (as well as new friends) time to surprise me, without bringing everything I know about, say, Tauruses into account. Without falling down the rabbit hole of research to find the year when a certain chart would have even been possible, and if that lines up with the years I have set the book in. Without considering the astro-weather of their birth that would have influenced surrounding historical events. I want to just let the story be the story — and if I feel the urge to give the characters a birth chart later, I will. But probably not. 

Besides, why rob future readers of the joy of debating characters’ astrology?

I don’t choose my book’s pub date (aka my book’s birthday)

This is something I can’t choose, actually. (Trust, I would not have purposefully picked a Scorpio eclipse for Heretic, even if the chart did end up being rather fitting — as they often do.) 

too perfect a gif to not use although i came close to using one of s1 gabriel as the publishing industry

Unless you’re self-published, or maybe Stephen King, no author can choose their book’s publication date. Which makes books rather like children, in the sense that most of us have absolutely no fucking clue when they’re going to come until the c-section (pub date) is scheduled. It’s not a perfect metaphor, but you get the idea.

The publishing house decides when your book fits in their schedule, and that’s when it arrives. You are very much at their mercy; trust, the Big 5 doesn’t know anything about eclipse season. (Although books that are released during Mercury Retrogrades do seem to do okay! Plenty of award winners and bestsellers have a natal Mercury Rx.)

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Any other questions for what I do or don’t do? Leave them in the comments!

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