Hi everyone,
Happy Friday/Venus day, and Happy New Moon! Before we get into it, a few quick announcements:
ICYMI, I had the tremendous pleasure of interviewing YA author Leah Johnson for this newsletter. Topics ranged from her years growing up in the Black Pentecostal church to how financial security has changed her creative process to The West Wing to a genuinely magical, out of body experience that ultimately resulted in a 7-figure book deal with Disney Hyperion. It’s a hell of a conversation — check it out!
Also also also: The next session of Astrology for Writers: How to Make Your Writing Work for You is OPEN! Early Bird pricing expires on July 15th — register now to secure your spot. If you’re a trans and/or non-binary member of the LGBTQIA+ community, there is a scholarship spot you can enter for here.
As always, writing prompt horoscopes are at the end, if you’d like to skip!
Xx,
Jeanna
For those of us who experience cold winters, summer usually means people — and getting social time as is humanly possible. Especially this year, it means seeing beloveds we may not have seen in more than a year.
But somehow, furiously writing my way towards a September book deadline, I forgot this.
Things to know: I am an extravert. I’m not going to bullshit you and say, “I’m an ambivert, I’m just one of those people who needs a lot of alone time” — I have a 12th house moon, of course I need alone time — because I am, fundamentally, an outgoing person who genuinely delights in being with my people, both IRL and digitally. I have a wide network of friends who I keep up with in person on a monthly basis. I was a theater kid and actually like public speaking. My chart ruler is in the 11th.
But when I tell you that shifting back to in person has thrown the most tremendous wrench into my book writing, a dedicated process that I had built within the container of during pandemic life — well.
For the last few weeks, I have been varying degrees of restless, anxious, and upset, complaining to my girlfriend, my therapist, my sister, my friends (you know, anyone who will listen) about how I had expected this final stretch of writing to be the easy part, and here I was, all stopped up with the worst case of creative constipation. I went from, I am absolutely meeting my deadline to, holy shit am I going to? in a matter of two weeks.
It’s taken a minute to diagnose the issue, but it turns out, the answer was right here in Cancer season.
(You know how sometimes you have to look at yourself and be like, bitch, you’re a professional astrologer. Look at your own goddamn birth chart!)
A lesson I learned long ago, and one that is revisiting me now (because I never get the message the first time), is that tending to my body is tending to my creative practice. This sounds obvious, but for me, this deeply Cancerian lesson is linked to the fact that my moon rules the part of my chart that has to do with my daily, physical well-being. If I am well fed and hydrated, if I meditate and do even ten minutes of yoga and take a walk, I am emotionally secure and set up for a creative day in a way that I am absolutely not if I do not do those things.
For me, nourishing the body is nourishing the spirit — something that is particularly vital in supporting myself emotionally through the sometimes painful process that is writing a memoir.
These last few weeks, I’ve let the excitement of seeing people and over-scheduling myself take precedence over the simple but deeply essential routines I have to do in order to ground myself for the success of my book. Slowly but surely, I am reprioritizing myself and my work.
This is the discomfort of Cancer season, part of why I always want to rush through it — but why it’s necessary to let things take the time they take:
Nurturing ourselves and our writing cannot be rushed.
*
There is a New Moon at 18 degrees of Cancer today, July 9th, at 9:17pm ET. New Moons generally plant new seeds; in Cancer, where the moon is home and happiest, this is especially true. Astrologers call Cancer the cardinal water sign — the rushing river who always has a direction, a current, taking them where they need to go.
This New Moon connects via trine with Neptune in Pisces, supporting our creative dreams, and is loosely opposite Pluto in Capricorn, helping us dig up the transformative stuff that rebirth and revision are made of. There’s a lot to work with here, if the spirit is willing.
Today, we are challenged to slake our thirst. To nourish that which we are hell-bent on denying. To invest in ourselves anew.
Your Writing Prompt Horoscopes for the New Moon in Cancer
Cancer season is not the halfway mark of the zodiac, but it is the halfway mark of the calendar year. It’s a helpful time to check in with where we are, with how we’re feeling. It offers a natural moment for reflection. As that cardinal water sign, it also initiates some helpful intuitive reflecting.
Reminder: The horoscopes for your rising sign most accurately reflect where and how this moon is transiting your chart.
Aries & Aries Rising
What am I beginning to nurture with and in my home? What do I want to encourage in my nest or physical space?
How am I defining family, and how do I want to define family? How am I learning to trust my gut instincts?
How can I become more aware of my early childhood conditioning in ways that enable healing?
Taurus & Taurus Rising
What writing project am I beginning or revisiting in a new, restorative way? What supports — emotional, physical — do I need in place in order to support this project?
What am I coming to understand about the roles that caution and hesitation may play in my everyday life and routines?
How can I share quality time with my siblings, close friends, and/or extended family in ways that are nourishing and respectful?
Gemini & Gemini Rising
What new processes am I beginning in regard to my financial life, and how can I ensure that my commitments stick? What structures do I need in place to ensure that I feel capable and supported?
Where do I often find myself tempted to give up or prematurely throw in the towel when it comes to money? How does this relate to old stories or trauma around shared resources or family history? What stories do I tell myself that I need to rewrite?
How is committing to financial growth a way of caring for and nourishing myself?
Cancer & Cancer Rising
What am I beginning when it comes to further developing my instincts, especially when it comes to trusting myself and what is good and nourishing for me? How does a sense of obligation to other people or systems sometimes cloud or disrupt my judgment of what is the best for me as a person?
How am I learning to ask for help instead of trying to gut it out and do it all myself? How does that kind of vulnerability feel in this moment? What does this process bring up creatively?
What am I becoming more aware of in my emotional life, particularly in regards to how it impacts and intersects with my creative life?
Leo & Leo Rising
What am I beginning when it comes to my behind the scenes projects? How am I nurturing my quiet, internal creative processes?
How am I learning to better identify my unconscious patterns in ways that are empathetic?
What ancestral healing or spiritual traditions am I interested in engaging with in ways that are emotionally healing and also boundary-honoring?
Virgo & Virgo Rising
What am I beginning in my friendships that feel emotionally intimate and nurturing? How does this extend to my creative communities?
What organizations and groups am I interested in investing my energy and time into? What are my motivations for doing so?
Where have I historically had challenges with fears of rejection or intimacy in group settings? How am I learning to create safety for myself and honor my boundaries with others?
Libra & Libra Rising
What am I beginning in my career or public life that feels emotionally nourishing? Or, where in my career or public life am I lacking — and am in desperate need of — nurturing and fulfillment?
How do my work relationships, and relationships with authority figures, impact my emotional well being and sense of safety? What patterns do I need to pay attention to? What new patterns possibly need to be created?
How am I creating safety for myself by providing myself with certain kinds of security? What kinds of security are necessary for me to feel most capable?
Scorpio & Scorpio Rising
What am I beginning to nurture when it comes to my understanding of spirituality and belief? What wisdom or higher education traditions am I investing in for my own emotional well being at this time?
How am I noticing my intellectual processes integrate with my emotional and spiritual processes? What distinctions am I noticing? What overlaps?
What do I want to nurture when it comes to my explorations and adventures — literal or imaginative — over the next six months?
Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising
What am I beginning to nourish and invest in when it comes to the resources I share with others? What feels emotionally fulfilling about these projects and commitments? What feelings or legacies are tied up in these agreements?
What boundaries am I honoring for myself at this moment? How am I delineating what I am responsible for versus what others are responsible for, particularly in moments of heightened emotion?
What agreements and contracts am I willing to take on, and what is the motivation behind them?
Capricorn & Capricorn Rising
What am I beginning to nurture when it comes to my committed partnerships, personal and professional? What am I interested in growing over the next six months?
What partnerships am I interested in inviting into my life (such as a new literary agent or long-term editor)? What relationships do I want to see deepen and grow?
How can I cocreate vulnerability and intimacy in a way that is respectful, healthy, and (if applicable) professional in a way that breaks with patterns of the past and lays down new track for the future?
Aquarius & Aquarius Rising
What am I beginning when it comes to my work routines and physical health? What parts of daily life have I been neglecting? What do I need to tend to?
In what ways does tending to the body connect to tending to my emotional and even spiritual life? What do I notice when one is out of whack?
What are one or two practical things I can do in this next week to begin creating habits again? How can I visualize putting any old remnants of shame in a corner and allowing these new and improved habits to take root in my life in ways that support me?
Pisces & Pisces Rising
What new beginnings am I nurturing in my creative life? What feels generative or even romantic about this?
What connections are coming into your life that are encouraging your newly enriched and revitalized sense of connection with the work?
If you’re at a moment where you’re feeling drained or exhausted, what are a few ways in which you can encourage those small sips of nourishment and creative hydration? How can you carve out a sliver of space for yourself? What boundaries are in need of reinforcement so that you can begin to fill your cup again?
That Gemini rising one hit me square in the heart!! Some tough questions to answer there, but worth the effort, I'm sure <3
Hi! I had a question—I’m in the middle of mulling over a career change, troubleshooting career and creative issues, and more and I’m interested in these aspect of your astrology course, but I’m also not sure I consider myself a writer. (I find more joy in leatherwork, artwork, etc.) I’m debating entering for the scholarship spot, but i also don’t want to take away someone’s place if someone, more focused on writing, might be in more need than I. Would you recommend taking your course for someone who’s creative pursuits are in another realm? Thank you!