It's spooky season—but there's nothing scary about your intuition

A spiderweb hanging between a tree and a fence, visible against a backdrop of trees only because it is covered in tiny dewdrops

Word to the Wise

Writing advice to unlock your unique creative magic

It’s almost here. Can you feel it? Halloween, Samhain, the witch’s new year, call it what you’d like—we’re approaching the height of spooky season.

The scratching at your windowpane isn’t a monster trying to get inside. It’s your intuition, asking you to come out and play in the crunchy leaves.

As a writer, your intuition is one of the most powerful tools in your creative arsenal.

Learning how to tap into it, listen to its messages, and translate that information into your stories and your writing practice? That’s true magic.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve talked about what intuition is and why it’s so important for writers, along with three areas you can focus on developing for a successful writing life: mindset, practice, and craft.

And you don’t have to work on these things alone. I’m here to help!

To celebrate the fall season and welcome in long, cozy nights of writing, I’m running a sale on my Get Unstuck Sessions.

A Get Unstuck Session is for you if you’re ready to:

  • Explore how intuition can benefit your creativity
  • Unblock a stuck point in your writing
  • Figure out a writing practice that works for your schedule and helps you meet your goals
  • Unlock your unique creative magic and tell the story only you can tell

During this one-on-one coaching session, you and I will spend an hour together on Zoom. We’ll get to the heart of what’s keeping you blocked—and find new pathways you can explore to get the words flowing again.

We can pull some cards and explore other intuitive practices to move you closer to your own inner knowing.

We can also get incredibly tactical, customizing a writing practice that aligns your wants, needs, schedule, and energy so that you feel prepared to tackle any writing project.

After our hour together, I’ll send you a recording of the conversation and a document with even more thoughts, recommendations, and resources to keep you feeling supported and ready to write.

A Get Unstuck Session could be the jolt of electricity your writing practice needs to come back to life, or the sprinkle of fairy dust that turns an old pumpkin into a carriage you can ride all the way to a completed draft of your book.

To make it even more magical, the first 10 people who sign up for a Get Unstuck Session get $50 off!

Writing is magic—and that magic is most powerful when we use it.

Before I send you off into the wilds of Halloween week, here’s our oracle card: the Shaggy Ink Cap

Shaggy ink caps are among my favorite fungi—they start off looking like eggs and then grow into these scaly, shaggy mushrooms. Eventually, they deliquesce, or decay, turning into an inky black liquid over the course of a few hours.

As an oracle card, the shaggy ink cap is all about the cycle of growth and destruction.

Each phase of our development—as people, as writers—has something we can learn and work with.

Sometimes, that might be a period of rapid growth and learning. This might look like hiring a coach, or taking in as much new information as possible (learning about intuition, for example, or researching a niche topic to make our world-building richer and more realistic).

Sometimes, it’s a period of destruction and decay: Working through old, self-defeating narratives about a writing practice that we need to shed before something better can grow in their place, for example.

The shaggy ink cap reminds us to be on the lookout for what we need to learn, what cycle we might be in, and where we can strive for balance. As you go about this week, reflect on the following questions and your creative practice:

  • Are you in a cycle of growth or decay? What do you need to nourish or let go of? Where might you need support in that cycle?
  • What cycles have you tried to resist before? Why? What happened?
  • How can you learn to work with your creative energy rather than against it?
  • What might it mean to treat your creativity and your writing practice as cyclical?

Yours in word witchery,

Bailey @ The Writing Desk

Writing is magic. Let's make some.

Here's how you can work with me:

*Affiliate Disclaimer: I sometimes include affiliate links to books and products I love. There's no extra cost to you when buying something from an affiliate link; making a purchase helps me keep creating Word to the Wise!

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