Tag Archives: Four Elements

Tarot and Writing

by Andrew | Leave a comment

I’m launching a new series of workshops on Zoom called Tarot For Writers that explores the potential of the tarot in creative writing as well as writing for personal growth. Starting with Magicians and Fools on 2 February 2025, we will talk about tarot and write and share resources, and writers who come along will take away plenty of ideas to explore at their own pace.

I’ve long been interested in tarot. My hippie auntie Marion is an astrologer, and she often used tarot. My old flatmate Mark from my first years in London had tarot cards, and he inspired me to acquire my own, a Rider Waite Smith deck I still have today. 

I delved into the cards, doing Celtic Cross readings and cribbing interpretations from The Complete Book of Tarot by Juliet Sharman-Burke. Later, as a freelance editor I copyedited books on tarot and numerology. When we lived in Boulder there were several new age shops I loved to visit, and I added a couple of other decks to what become a collection. I have over thirty today – see a few at the end of this post. 

When we moved back to London I took classes on tarot at Treadwell’s bookshop in Covent Garden with the late Sue Merlyn Farebrother. Sue was a brilliant teacher: intuitive, good-humoured, organised, attentive to detail, and rich in her knowledge. I’d later help her in developing a proposal for her first book on astrology, and introduced her to an editor at Rider, who published this book and her next. I’m sorry she never got to publish her book on tarot – I know it would have been excellent. Her teaching certainly was.

Sue’s classes were the place where I grew a deeper understanding of the powers of tarot. We did all sorts of exercises in class and at home. We did visualisations, we discussed the archetypes of the Major Arcana, we explored the representations of the court cards and the symbolic powers of numbers and elements. We looked at the different images of various decks. We drew one card every day for a month, and I remember being surprised – and eventually not so surprised – that I drew the same card (out of seventy-eight) seven times in thirty days: the Ten of Pentacles. 

Working with tarot in writing

Around that time I remember reading the manuscript of a very well-researched historical novel that felt pretty static. It read like a sequence of richly rendered tableaux, but not much more. And I realised: this book was all Earth. It lacked Fire and Water – energy and feeling. For that matter, it lacked Air too, in that it lacked the clarity of organisation and structure that could carry a story forward. Earth (tarot’s Pentacles), Fire (Wands), Water (cups), Air (Swords): suddenly the Four Elements of the suits of the Minor Arcana were giving me a framework for reading books and understanding the balance – or imbalance – of creative productions.

I continued to use this Four Elements framework, initially only in my own mind as I took stock of manuscripts I was reading, but later on developing writing workshops too. 

This Four Elements practice has become a cornerstone for much of my work, even when I’m not using it explicitly. It integrates my interest in contemplative education and holistic approaches towards creativity with my firm editorial grounding in the craft of writing as well as the practical matters of publishing.

I always explain that traces of the Four Elements that we see in the four suits of tarot can be found in other contexts, such as astrology, Jungian psychology, Myers-Briggs tests, and cognitive behavioural therapy. Someone at a workshop identified the Four Elements in the characters of The Wind in the Willows: Water for Rat, Earth for Mole, Fire for Mr Toad, and Air for Badger.

But the Four Elements always leads me back to the tarot. Once upon a time, the idea of memorising very specific interpretations for all seventy-eight cards daunted me, but then I realised I wasn’t approaching it in the right way, at least in the right way for me. I needed to establish my own interpretations and reference points. 

I occasionally take courses or trainings as refreshers, and as guides I also consult resources such as the ones listed below. That sort of bookish inquiry always takes me deeper and gives me fresh insights and plenty to think about. 

And most of all I’ve learned about the cards by using them, not least in areas where I have expertise, such as writing and editing.

The Major cards have, perhaps, more accessible or obvious meanings, but there’s always more to find in those archetypes, particularly when we pay attention to their meanings and manifestations in different contexts and cultures. Jungian approaches add valuable perspectives.

Something that once gave me pause in the number cards of the Minor Arcana was the great variations in imagery between different decks; some number cards, such as those of the Marseille decks, have few pictures at all beyond images of the Batons (Wands) or the Cups themselves. How do we make sense of that? Increasingly, I have come to give greater weight to the numbers themselves and their correspondence with specific energies and actions, in conjunction with the relevant elements, e.g., the Aces with beginnings, or the eights with organisation and order.

I’m also interested in the ways in which the court cards represent people or aspects of our personalities: venturing forth into the world (the traditional Knights), or embodying maturity and self-assurance (the Queens). I’m also intrigued by the ways in which various decks shift the genders of the court cards, or translate them into other forms: Princess instead of Page in the DruidCraft tarot, or the Place, Knower, Gift and Speaker in Rachel Pollack’s Shining Tribe tarot. 

And then there are decks with additional cards, such as the Shining Tribe’s Sphinx in Eden. And there are divination cards, such as the Wild Unknown Animal Spirit deck, whose gorgeous artwork by Kim Krans prompted me also to acquire her original Wild Unknown tarot deck.

All of these rich images and symbols and connections give us a powerful framework that is constantly refreshing itself. It offers food for the imagination, and it also allows reflection for personal growth and spiritual development. I often use tarot cards for daily reflection or as part of my regular meditation practice.

Approaches to tarot

My fundamental take on the seventy-eight cards is that they contain all that we are and all the questions that we have to ask – of ourselves, and in the context of writing of the stories we have to tell. When we encounter a tarot card we can ask: what does this mean for me right now? And in writing: what can this mean for my story? How is it present, or how might it be made present and brought forth in the work and in the world? What, importantly, what aspects of writing craft will help in this task?

That being said: I never fail to be amazed by the recurrence of certain cards and patterns. That’s just a fact. I recently did two three-card readings using two different decks, and two of the same cards appeared in both readings.

I am sometimes guarded around certain aspects of tarot, to the extent I was once scolded by someone attending a workshop for what they took as cautions or apologies for the use of esoterica. And she was right: no, we shouldn’t lean away from all those mysteries and wonders the tarot conjures up. We should not be defensive about using tarot, and I don’t want to give that impression.

I guess I have been put on the back foot a bit as I am aware that some people are fearful of tarot. A writer who was coming to a Four Elements workshop told me she couldn’t attend after I emailed in advance a handout using pictures of the four Aces from the Smith deck. Another friend won’t have tarot cards in the house. I discovered this only after my arrival, oops, but at least I kept them tucked away in my suitcase. 

In both cases, I suspect religious traditions have created fear and superstitions about tarot, and I wonder if some subscribers will unsubscribe after this post. I doubt cards representing the Devil and Death and the Hanged Man help either, particularly as they have been used in popular culture: remember Tales of the Unexpected and Live and Let Die?

I only recently found out that tarot cards were only freely printed and sold in England after the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 1951! Now I am asking myself whether under consumer legislation I need to declare that my new workshops are ‘for entertainment purposes only’. Does writing count as entertainment?!

But I have observed a few too many boundaries getting crossed at the fringes of those worlds where we find tarot. I remember taking a tarot course where, unasked, someone started to tell me about specific messages that my dead grandmother was channelling to me through an angel. Those messages had a couple of details that seemed unnervingly accurate until I recalled a conversation with another student in the tea break the week before, and realised those details had been overheard – and misinterpreted. It was the misinterpretation that was the clue.

And a tarot illustrator once slid into my DM’s on Instagram offering me a psychic reading based on the energy in my profile picture, saying that afterwards ‘something good will happen in your life’. Suddenly I remembered why I’d previously unfollowed their account and stopped using their deck, as they’d done this before.

I have to call bullshit on that sort of thing. I think it’s patently unethical to make such approaches without being invited. People often come to tarot with vulnerabilities, or grasping for specific outcomes, and we must be sensitive to all that that presents. Life has many mysteries, and I want to remain curious and open about them, but fraudulence and inauthenticity shut things down for ourselves as well as for others. We need a welcoming and respectful approach. As in writing, as in life.

New workshops on tarot for writers

Back to the writing. I think tarot is a remarkable tool for writers. Its form gives us an invitation to the imagination, an instrument for creative focus, and windows into our unconscious drives. I really love how tarot blends structure and symbol with artistic expression, and helps us compose divine messages all of our very own.

I first taught a workshop devoted to tarot and writing at the Hastings Book Festival in 2023, and now I’m happy to be launching Tarot for Writers on Zoom. The class are designed to be stand-alone and will run on Zoom at 5-6pm London on Sundays: let’s bring some light into the long dark teatime of the soul! Please note that recordings will not be available right now, as I want us all to take part free of inhibition about joining in. 

The first four classes will survey the archetypes of the Major Arcana and investigate the elements, court cards, and number cards of the Minor Arcana for what they can bring to our writing. 

  • Magicians and Fools (2 February) – we’ll consider the Fool as a student and the Magician as a teacher to guide us through the archetypes and big themes of the Major Arcana 
  • Aces High (16 February) – we’ll take a closer look at the Four Elements through their purest and most powerful expression in the Aces, and particularly for the ways they strengthen voice, feeling, texture and focus in our writing
  • Courtiers and Coronets (2 March) – we’ll use the court cards as the basis for thinking about character and perspective 
  • Write By Numbers (16 March) – we’ll identify specific actions and gestures in the number cards that can be used in plotting and structuring our stories, paying special attention to odd vs even numbers

In each workshop we’ll discuss specific cards within the structure of tarot, and we’ll do some in-class writing experiments, and you’ll take away ideas to try at your own pace. I’ll also share a handy reference on tarot for writers, and I’m hoping that writers who come along will also share their own interpretations, as tarot is rich with associations and there are always new perspectives to gather. Throughout the emphasis will be on finding inspiration and points of departure to explore in writing. 

Over the weeks we’ll also look at various resources on tarot and investigate different styles of tarot decks and divination cards. Feel free to bring your own cards to class to share with us too.

And yes – the class titles indulge my fondness for puns and alliteration. There may be more.

I’m planning these classes as we pass through the rites and thresholds of late winter and early spring: Imbolc, St Brigid’s Day, Candlemas, Valentine’s, Lent, St David’s Day, the Spring Equinox. The crocuses and daffodils and the early tulips will be arriving as the sun gets higher in the sky and the days get longer: perhaps there’s no better time to stretch ourselves into new creative endeavours with such powerful inspirations.

Resources

During the classes I’ll also introduce various resources, including:

  • Rachel Pollack, the classic Seventy-eight Degrees of Wisdom and also the magical inquiries of A Walk Through the Forest of Souls: A Tarot Journey to Spiritual Awakening
  • Joan Bunning, Learning the Tarot – this is my go-to reference when I want to refresh my memory on card descriptions and keywords, and it’s based on an free online course that is most generously shared here: www.learntarot.com
  • Jessica Doré, Tarot for Change – I love this book’s thoughtful takes, which often question the usual interpretations and find something new in the cards – you can also find her on Instagram
  • Other social media accounts illuminate and inform. Try Laetitia Barber, Amanda Barokh, Biddy Tarot, Noah Rogers
  • Margaret Atwood, Three Tarot Cards
  • Tarot For Writers at my page on Bookshop.org

Apps

Nothing beats shuffling and cutting the cards, but it can be a good idea to carry tarot resources on your phone, if only as a reference.

Maybe I’ll review some of these apps as well as decks and other resources in more detail in the future. If you have recommendations of your own, do suggest in a comment below.

A few favourite decks

My first deck was the classic Rider Waite deck. Now that I know more about its history I try to remember to call it the Smith deck, because illustrator Pamela Colman Smith’s colourful and whimsical illustrations are what captivated me then and what still captivate me now. It’s the one I always go back to. 

Thank goddess that’s over, and the Sun is coming up! But yes, first I must plant some tulip bulbs. The Smith deck.

My current fave is the Morgan-Greer deck, whose full-bleed colour-saturated hippie imagery is close to my heart. Artist Bill Greer studied at the University of Colorado, where I once taught, so it also has that Boulder connection. Does anyone know anything more about him?

With these Morgan-Greer cards some decisive Big Emperor Energy is needed to cut through all these words (you should see my desk).

I’ve not always favoured very culturally specific decks, but someone gave me a gift of the DruidCraft Tarot and I’ve been consistently impressed. Its guidebook always gives me something to think about. 

Variations in the DruidCraft Tarot: Princess for Page, Fferyllt for Temperance, High Priest for Hierophant.

I also love the artwork of the Wild Unknown tarot and the Wild Unknown Animal Spirit deck, which uses the Four Elements and also adds a number of Spirit cards. 

Fire, Water, Earth and Air are joined by Spirit in the Wild Unknown Animal Spirit cards.

The two most recent additions to my own collection are Rachel Pollack’s Shining Tribe tarot, recently back into print, and Chris Riddell’s Cloud Tower tarot. 

Rachel Pollack’s Shining Tribe Tarot.
Chris Riddell’s new Cloud Tower Tarot.

The Tarot For Writers workshops begin with Magicians and Fools on 2 February – I hope to see some of you there.

(Posted on my blog as well as Substack. I’m trying both places out for now.)

Clear Thinking

by Andrew | Leave a comment

To round out this short series of posts about the Four Elements practice in writing, let’s look at the fourth and final element: Air.

Air is associated with the mind: thinking, mental states, logic. At its best, it’s associated with clarity: strong ideas clearly expressed in conjunction with the other elements, e.g., conjuring up the senses (earth) in ways that prompt action (fire) and evoke feeling (water). In tarot, the element of Air is represented by the suit of Swords, and it’s useful to think of the image of a sharp blade ready to slice through the air with precision and power – imagine, in the photo above, a giant sword cutting through the clouds towards clear blue sky.

In other contexts, though, an ineffective presence of Air lies at the heart of some of the most frequently encountered weaknesses in undeveloped manuscripts: cluttered writing that’s trying too hard, or stodgy prose that’s hard to follow or care about.

Air can also mess with our process, allowing our monkey minds to, say, worry neurotically about finding an agent while we are still only on page ten of a first draft.

With the craft of writing, I particularly associate Air with ORGANISATION and STRUCTURE and FOCUS. With the bigger picture of a piece of writing, this could mean a well-plotted storyline, or the architecture of a book: how events and revelations are paced and presented through time to create suspense or simply keep the reader reading on.

At a more detailed level, Air can be found in the structure of sentences and paragraphs: effectively rendered SYNTAX that achieves a certain speed or mood, and is clearly understood. Mindful choices of words and verb forms and punctuation will make all the difference to a text.

And Air isn’t just found on the open surface of writing. I also think about the THEMES and IDEAS that work with the intellect, as well as FIGURES OF SPEECH that operate on subconscious levels: symbols, metaphors, similes. Bits of cleverness that engage active minds – though not, it’s hoped, in the process overegging things.

As with the exploration of the other elements, it is going to make sense if Air is balanced with Fire, Water, and Earth – grounded with earthly details, for example, to prevent the writing getting aethereal in a dry and inaccessible way.

As a writing experiment: looking back at previous writing exercises that tasked you on writing letters between characters (Compassionately Yours and Earthly Exchanges), plan a series of letters or exchanges that maps out a larger story. The letter is a form that instantly creates connections and draws us into some sort of agreement – or disagreement. Letters offer gifts, extend invitations, send refusals, or deliver news good or bad.

For example, consider how specific letters can be placed within a story as:

  • triggers or inciting incidents
  • causes or effects in a chain of consequences
  • moments of rising tension, or reversals: do we teeter from moments of hope to moments of despair before hope rises again? Or does fortune rise and rise before a deep dive – or fall and fall before an improvement in circumstances? See Kurt Vonnegut on the shapes of stories
  • obligatory scenes
  • a midpoint or point of no return, after which there is no going back
  • a climax
  • a resolution

To help with this, you might want to think about various theories of on plotting. Which are exhaustive – and can be exhausting! This is one of those points where overthinking can be a problem, and the clarity of Air can be achieved by committing to a simple known form. A few ideas about structure to help:

  • Map out your letters according to how they might fall with an established story structure. I often recommend Michael Hauge’s Five Key Turning Points and Six Stages of a screenplay (which can be adapted for prose too).
  • Or consider the twelve steps of Christopher Vogler’s Hero’s Journey.
  • Or perhaps place a letter in every gap for a version of the Pixar Story Spine: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___. And ever since that day ___.

Further posts on plotting: Plotting; Only Connect.

Make yourself a plan. List all of the letters or alternative forms of exchange. Note who they are sent between, and what is exchanged, and what might change in the world of those characters as a result: how do they end up feeling (water) each time? Also note how these letters might be grounded in the world of the senses (earth) with, e.g., settings or objects of desire.

Don’t worry too much (yet!) about gaps, or places where the story feels thin. You can flesh things out in the writing, feeling your way through characters’ intentions and yearnings. What goes on in these letters can’t always be planned, and sometimes you do have to keep on writing to see what emerges instinctively from your characters and settings as you spend time with them.

Eventually it’s likely you will have to put your thinking gear back on to decide how to arrange your material, deciding where to cut or expand – that’s drafting. But too sometimes a good exercise in thinking about our stories lies in actively not overthinking them during the early stages of writing: a balanced sense of Air.

You can take your plan further by committing to a calendar for writing these letters: one a week, or if you have time one a day across the course of a week or so. See where you end up. This might be the whole or part of an epistolary work, or these letters might serve as anchors in the scheme of a larger story to be fleshed out with other scenes. Or they might simply serve as an outline of sorts for a longer work.

Also take a look at the overall energy (fire) charted between the letters: can you identify a clear, focused line (air) that summarises the story they tell in a sentence or two?

Additional elemental activity: set a timer for five minutes and meditate at your desk or wherever you write before you embark on this activity. Keep it simple: each time a thought arises, note it as a thought and then let it pass, and then return your attention to your breath – connect with the air you take in, and the air you send out into the world.

And a date for your diary in the new year: on Monday 11 January at 6pm I am the guest at the next Words Away Zalon, where I shall be talking to Kellie Jackson about the Airy topic of mindfulness in writing and publishing: Words In Action.

Earthly Exchanges

by Andrew | 1 Comment

Continuing our closer look at my Four Elements practice in writing, let’s think about Earth.

Earth is about the embodiment of the material world in writing: how we bring to life sights, sounds, tastes, smells, textures or touch – the slant of sunlight in November, the song of a robin, the anticipation of eating those fat beans stewing with bayleaf and onions in the pressure cooker back home. The smell of onions that will linger in every corner of the house for a few days!* The crispy – and soggy – leaves that your boots sink into.

Material objects often lie at the heart of a story too: a magic ring, or an inherited house, or a painting in the attic, or a gun over the mantelpiece. Objects can create a focus that serves up purpose and tension, and they can ground the writing in a concrete and specific reality.

These are earthly considerations in the FORM of our writing at a MICRO level: which tangible images and sense perceptions do we select for the characters and settings and objects that populate our stories, and which words do we choose to describe them and make them feel real?

The FORM that writing takes is also a consideration at a MACRO level. I recently blogged about Ursula Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory – what is the larger shape that contains the writing? And at a more detailed level, how might, for example, your book be organised into the narrative units of chapters? Or think about other forms, conceptual or more tangible: the Russian doll format of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, or the separate strands of a braided narrative, or the exchange of letters that makes up an epistolary novel.

Earth is also associated with ACTION: some physical gesture or action set in motion when we add the energy and purpose of Fire. Think about the acts of sex and violence that feature in so many stories, or more subtly the earthly gestures of a kiss or the signing of a contract.

As a writing experiment: bring some of these aspects of Earth together by writing a letter in response to the compassionate letter from the Water exercise Yours Compassionately.

Make this letter contain a material action as well as a material object that somehow serves as a focus to ground the writing: a thank you for a tangible gift, notification of an inheritance, the finding of a body, a ladder someone’s walked under or fallen off, a wrong envelope.

Importantly, think about the exchange created between these letters: what is sent and what is received? What is given, and what is taken?

*Update from tomorrow: the smell of onions lingering on the seal of the pressure cooker, and the tang of vinegar and the drying effect of bicarbonate of soda you’re using to try to remove said smell …

Yours Compassionately

by Andrew | 2 Comments

Looking at further examples from the Four Elements practice in writing, let’s consider Water, which is associated with emotion.

There are plenty of ways to think about evoking feeling in writing: shifts in tone can work, for example, through pacing, word choice, sentence length, and plenty of other techniques. Perspective and point of view can also make a difference in establishing an intimacy or detachment or a particular angle on events. These are tweaks or more radical changes we can experiment with during revising and self-editing: which way of telling the story creates a stronger emotional bond with the reader?

But too I am always looking for the intuitive approaches – the things that work their magic naturally, that unspool feeling without effort. When I taught the Water Ways workshop with Words Away back in February, we looked specifically at letter-writing as an instinctive act of embodying feeling in writing.

Firstly, we read some of the real-life letters of Tove Jansson. Depending on who she is addressing – family, lovers, old friends – her tone can be gossipy, passionate, newsy, sincere. The writing is also very efficient – often lyrical in its description of life in her island summerhouse, often brisk, more than a bit scary in describing air raids during the war, grateful in saying thank you for gifts sent from a friend in America, no-nonsense but revealing in relating business matters about her beloved creations the Moomins. Letter-writing doesn’t usually give you time for fussing about language; you have a message and you have to get it across. There is a direct quality of exchange and communication.

We also read selections from Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, a beautiful novel that takes the form of a letter to his mother – you can listen to the author read an extract at that link from his publisher. Again: a remarkable intimacy works through this direct quality of addressing someone – in this case a mother who has shared those experiences of being a first-generation migrant.  Also, in this instance, the writing has a real charge from knowing that the mother in the novel can’t read. There have been struggles, there have been difficulties in their relationship – but there is also great love.

As a writing experiment: write a letter from one character to another with a particular purpose. In this instance, give it focus by making it a letter that is compassionate in its intent.

I’m currently taking an online class in Mindful Compassion with my alma mater Naropa University. (More info on a self-paced version here.) It’s fascinating! Not least as I’ve only dipped my toe into the disciplines of religious studies and psychology before. The science underlying various studies on mindfulness training is compelling.

I’ve been particularly interested in various thoughtfully curated readings on altruism and lovingkindness, especially as they tease out the distinctions between empathy (sharing feeling for others) and compassion (extending feeling towards others in ways that alleviate suffering).

It’s also made me question the idea of self-esteem, which can place a premium on pumped-up or unrealistic senses of the self and others. ‘Esteem’ – respect and admiration. Are we doing good things to be respected and admired, or are we doing good things for the sake – and the need – of doing good things?

Lots to think about – and too lots for writers to consider in how they contain feeling in the words they choose.

So, put this into practice: write a letter between two characters in which one of them is doing good things by reaching out to alleviate someone else’s suffering. Consider the nature of that character’s suffering, and then consider its cause and what another character can do to make that suffering more tolerable – and then let that character reach out.

Additional elemental activity: Before you write your character’s letter, try thinking – or feeling – your way into both characters as you take a shower or have a bath. (Note: there might be a difference between the experience of running water in a shower, and the relatively still water of a bath.)

Alternative Water-based writing experiment: I Remember, because so much about memories taps into emotion.

Writing Utopia

by Andrew | Leave a comment

Continuing to explore the Four Elements practice in writing, I want to think about Fire in a particular way.

Among other things, I relate Fire to intention in writing – what purpose fires you up and inspires you in a positive way and helps create a focus in your work? Sometimes writing is about tearing things down, but sometimes writing is about creating things fresh and new in ways that represent your ideal vision of the world. And this is where we can add a little Earth to create a particular setting and populate it with preferred characters for whom we makes stories with desired outcomes: utopias.

The dystopian novel is a well-established trend right now, and it’s not even funny to joke that we are living through dystopian times. So that is a good enough reason to make space for something a little less gloomy in our writing, perhaps?

I think, for example, about queer utopias. When I first came out, one of my favourite novels was Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, whose rainbow vision I ended up living when I moved to a Big Gay Flatshare in central London. I’ve kept on seeking out these idealised literary spaces in both books and the real world. Just last year I very much enjoyed the fluid forms of the novel Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, whose author, Andrea Lawlor, led me to the classic The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell.

It’s easy for me to make a leap from that book to Salmon Creek Farm, a queer commune in northern California that I stumbled across on Instagram. And then I am led back to Naropa University, where I studied and taught, which was most definitely born of a utopian impulse to bring mindfulness and contemplative education to the West.

And let’s not forget too that utopias also have their dystopian moments; in an odd quirk of serendipity, I received Lit Hub Daily as I typed the previous sentence, and that email led with a story about a shocking little incident in Naropa’s history when poet WS Merwin and his girlfriend were forced to strip naked at a party. Which reminded me of a Naropa Summer Writing Program panel devoted to utopias, where it was proposed that everyone has their own personal utopia, and one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia.

And maybe that is something to work out in the writing – teasing out tensions and conflicts is the stuff of good drama.

I also think the idea of community is important to utopias, and at this moment, when meeting up in person is less than straightforward, I think about gatherings such as Words Away – Kellie Jackson’s monthly salons and zalons devoted to books and the craft of writing.

The great thing about utopias is that they stimulate the imagination – not just for adventures in writing and reading, but for good ways to be together in the world.

As a writing experiment: Create a utopia.

First: draw a map of it.

Then: create a constitution or a manifesto for its guiding principles and inspirations.

Next: write a scene where a newcomer experiences the promise of this utopian space for the first time.

Then: write a subsequent scene where the complications or compromises of utopias are revealed …

Throughout, make space for your wildest desires and intentions – your preferred ways of being in the world.