Hi y’all! I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries from folks about chart readings and other ways to work with me. My books are closed right now, and will be the foreseeable future, so the best way to work with me is to take one of my classes.
These are the ones that are upcoming:
The brand new, self-paced Astrology for Writers: How to Make Your Writing Work for You is available for pre-order/registration! Everyone who pre-orders gets exclusive, never-before-taught bonus modules on Venus (aesthetics) and Mars (work ethic).
Non-astrology: I’m teaching a 4-Week Online Nonfiction Seminar on Understanding the Book Proposal with Catapult. This one is live and runs Monday nights October 18-November 8.
And now, let’s talk Mercury Retrograde!
Xx,
Jeanna
Read about astrology long enough, and you’ll hear the classic Mercury Retrograde advice, that retrogrades are good for anything with a “re” in front of it: review, renew, reconsider, revise.
I’m deep in book revisions — getting feedback from first readers, making a plan of attack for the full-length manuscript, setting the next set of deadlines with my editor. And revising. I am, actually, revising, which is to say, editing. The questions have gone from, how does one write a book? to how does one rewrite it?
Michaela Coel, who recently won a hat trick of Emmys for I May Destroy You, including for writing, said she wrote 191 drafts of the series. One hundred and ninety-one. The number is staggering; the commitment to excellence, even more so.
There is production, and pruning, and pruning that is still production. One friend in my writer’s group, Lilly Dancyger, has talked about how, in shooting for a daily word goal, she is sure to count the number of words she deletes or changes, for surely it is not simply the new ideas that count, but also how we rework the existing ones.
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Mercury, the planet that governs all things communication, stationed retrograde in the wee hours of the morning at 1:10a ET, at 25* of Libra. This one lasts from September 27-October 18, when it will station direct at 11:17a ET. The last retrograde of 2021, this one is also in an air sign, putting a particular emphasis on the themes of writing and communication. Given that it’s Libra, we are also especially invited to review our relationship to one-on-one relationships of all kinds.
Anyone who has subscribed to this newsletter for a decent length of time knows that I am a pragmatist about Mercury Rx: much of the fear-mongering on the internet is in the interest of creating new content and making sales. Mercury stations retrograde three times every single year, for roughly three weeks per retrograde. That’s nine weeks a year. Are you honestly going to put your life on hold for almost two and a half months? Of course not. Professional astrologers — if they’re business savvy — don’t, either.
So keep living. Keep writing. Read your contracts a few extra times. Dot your i’s. Cross your t’s. Try to rein in the impulsivity on social media (which Mercury, both communicator and trickster, has much to do with), and give yourself extra buffers if you have to travel (another area of life ruled by the psychopomp), but by all means, don’t put a halt to everything you’ve been building momentum toward.
As ever, astrology is about working with the sky in all its contexts, not just “optimizing” for capitalism’s “best” moments.
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Mercury Rx is particularly friendly to those of us who are in the middle of revising or otherwise reworking and rejiggering projects that aren’t yet done, that haven’t quite worked — things that need a tweak or even a complete overhaul. If you aren’t feeling completely gung-ho about the novel you’ve been tinkering with for years, Mercury, the trickster of the Roman pantheon, would very much like to use this retrograde to help you turn it upside down and shake out its pockets. Why so serious? Mercury might ask over the next few weeks, as we cling to routines and hard drives like life rafts. Go out and play.
When I was still drafting the book, I kept a few index cards with hastily written notes to myself on my desk, one of which read, very simply: pass/fail. It was a reminder from another friend and member of my writer’s group, Angela Chen, who said this to me with some frequency as I neared the end of the draft — that it wasn’t graded, that the point was to get words on the page, to get structures loosely in place so that I could revise moving forward. That no one was judging me that harshly but myself.
Now that I have moved on to revision, there are different words of advice on different index cards, propped up against the picture frames and flower vase on my sunny desk. I find revising to be harder, in that I cannot simply take a pen in hand or open my computer and go, words coming easily and quickly. Rather like in meditation, it takes a while for me to break the surface of myself. So, one of the cards reads: sit with the first few minutes of discomfort — the words will come.
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This Mercury Rx might hold some discomfort, mainly because Mercury will spend the entirety of its retrograde co-present (i.e., in the same sign) with that warrior who so dearly loves to pick fights: Mars. While Libra is not Mars’ favorite sign to be, Mars can still be passive aggressive here, and with Mercury around, it’s a signature for “fighting words.” A good time to take a social media break, if you were thinking about it.
A day to put on your calendar: Saturday, October 9th, as Mercury Rx and Mars will be conjunct, having a rather direct conversation and quite possibly confrontation about just how diplomatic they need to be when it comes to addressing discomfort. Because Mercury is retrograde, this may well be a long-standing issue that is up for review, a conversation that is returning once again for your review. If you notice that you’re more spiky and on edge in this retrograde, try to bring as much gentleness to yourself and others as you can muster. If you, on the other hand, notice that you’re bending over backwards for every person but yourself, be sure to hold the line and prioritize your own needs.
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Coel’s 191 drafts have prompted me to think about the process of revision: how we talk about it, how we embrace it, also how we resent it. How we as writers and creators treat it as a part of the process of capitalist production, working toward some factory-produced perfection, rather than as a part of the messy creative process that is perpetually unearthing insight and intuitive connection.
Mercury Rx is an opportunity to embrace the mess. To look for new wells of creative inspiration. To begin rewiring our neural pathways that can get so stuck in particular patterns and routines, to the point that all the magic gets drained out of the work in the interest of harder faster better.
And to listen — to the work, to our intuition, to ourselves.
If you read this newsletter and want to help it grow (and support my work!), consider becoming a paid subscriber. The subscription includes a detailed guide to every month’s upcoming astrology and how it impacts writers. Best days to pitch or revise? It’s all in there. It also includes specialty newsletters on planetary events like major ingresses, Mercury Retrograde, Year Ahead 2022, and more.