Teneice Durrant, creator of Tenth Fox Tarot, will mark each full moon with a tarot reading, ritual for releasing creative blocks, and writing exercise. Writers, embrace boredom.
Full moon in Taurus
This month’s full moon is in Taurus, and is called the Beaver Moon.
While a bull and a beaver might seem like an unusual pairing, Taureans are known for their penchant for creating cozy, homey spaces full of good food, good drinks, and lush places to rest and restore. As we move towards winter, thoughts of making a cozy home to comfort us during the cold should be at the top of our list.
When we are children, teachers and parents may tell us that bears and other forest dwellers sleep all winter. That they have to eat a lot and store up food for a long hibernation. As adults, we know that bears, beavers, and all the other woodland creatures don’t literally sleep for three months. They do keep to their homes and conserve as much energy as possible, though. This how they survive the winter.
An eclipse will sneak its way through this full moon, and with it will come the unearthing of any old, hidden hurts that threaten our survival. The easiest way forward—though easy is a relative term—will be to allow these hurts to occupy your space without struggle.
Remember, we have to conserve our energy if we are going to survive the winter.
Writing exercise
Here is the prompt for your character (or you, if you’re writing nonfiction) on releasing distractions.
It would be super easy to snuggle up to Netflix and Hulu and all the other binge-supporting streaming services, just as we did during the pandemic. Scroll Instagram and Tik Tok to the point of paralysis. It would be easy to write distractions and external conflict so that we/our characters don’t have time to think about our wounds.
Imagine a situation where the main character is cut off from all Wi-Fi-enabled entertainment. They have a phone, sure, but it can only call and text. They are trapped in a mountaintop cabin. Locked in at the bank because the power grid went out, causing an automatic lock down.
The situation shouldn’t be dire or life threatening. They have water, some food, it’s not too cold or hot. But there is nothing to do. Your character needs to be bored. They need to sit with this boredom until the old hurts have a chance to move to the surface.
Describe three old hurts that come through: One from when they were a child, one from when they were in love, and one from their career or college education.
How would your character process these wounds? Would they scream and cry and let the hurt physically move through their body as to release it from muscle memory? Would they forgive themselves and others? Would they make a little ritual of release such as writing down what hurt them and burning the scraps of paper? Explore.
Working out the internal conflict is the important part, so give your character the time, words, and cozy, safe space to process with as little external distractions as possible.
This winter, the less time you spend on social media or streaming networks, the more opportunity you will have to be bored. And in boredom is where the creativity begins.
Until next time, find my tarot podcast at anchor.fm/tenthfox.
Do you ever let yourself get bored? Will you try this exercise to develop either a fiction or nonfiction story? Share with us in the comments.
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