I don’t usually blog about Woo (aka woo-woo, aka my spirituality, aka magic, divination, witchy business). It’s a deep part of my spiritual practice and I get that not everyone really “feels” it, and that’s perfectly fine and really, as it should be. Ideally, we should all choose our spiritual paths because they resonate and are truth for us.

But here’s the interesting thing. I’ve gotten the same message from multiple sources over the last few days, and I just want to throw it out for all the rest of you, in case it’s something you need to hear too.

It’s been a tough month, with being unmotivated and lots of imposter syndrome and “why-am-I-doing-this” stuff flying around my head. Only getting half as many classes at my “regular job” has meant a big gap in my anticipated income, so there’s been a little bit of scrambling to try to make that up, and that’s taken a lot of my energy and brain space. Add to that the fact that I got TWO rejections this week (one from a magazine, turning down a short story that I was 100% sure they were going to buy, and one from an agent I stalked for months waiting for her to re-open to queries because I was 100% sure she was going to be my first request for a full–she didn’t even ask for pages beyond the first 3 included in the query.)

So my confidence in my own intuition has taken a big hit, and with this Pisces full moon I’m all in my feels and triggered beyond belief and swampy with “somebody-please-encourage-me” vibes, which as you all probably know NEVER result in anything useful.

A few days ago, I went looking for answers. I was guided, in very specific ways, to my favorite Tarotista, my favorite guru, my own oracle reading, my own tarot, and as an added bonus, a special intuitive message event from a friend of a friend.

They all said essentially the same thing, despite being completely unrelated to one another and having no connections other than me asking for guidance (paraphrased below):

Master SA: Water always reaches its destination. When you are emotionally triggered by a blockage, know that you are being guided away from one thing and toward something that is meant for you. Flow rather than fight. Use awareness meditation daily to help you stay in the flow.

Tarotista TG: You are receiving guidance, but you are so in your head you can’t hear it. Get out of your head and into your spirit. Blend what you’re truly passionate about into one. Meditate, pray, and let your intuition guide you instead of your logical mind.

Friend of a friend, SB: I see you standing in front of a heavily-laden harvest table, full of apples of all kinds, red gold and green. You are already thinking about the recipes you want to make with them. You have a beautiful harvest and you are proud of it, and you *should* be proud of it. But the next steps in what to do with this bounty must be very intuitive. What do you have a taste for? What is your desire?

My own oracle reading for full moon/equinox: release what’s holding you back, including your need to *logically know*. Accept yourself where you are, instead of being frustrated with where you are, in order to open yourself to accept the blessings flowing in. Be like water when faced with resistance, flow through it.

Uhhhhh … okay, seems like I should pay attention. Meditate. Intuition. Passion/desire. Flow not fight. Listen for guidance.

I can feel myself trying to think into this again, because that’s what I do. I love my mind, my intellectual capacity (Although I had one misguided boyfriend in the distant past who wouldn’t introduce me to his friends because he felt I wasn’t an intellectual, and his friends (and he) allegedly *were*. How did he make this decision? He said: “In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never once invited me to criticize your views.” I pointed out to him that it was because I didn’t care what he thought of my views, not because I wasn’t an intellectual. You can guess where the relationship went after that.)

Remarkably, astonishingly, beside the point. Anyway.

It’s very difficult, when faced with the rejection quotient of traditional publishing, to persist and not become triggered and discouraged. I used to write in the short form consistently, but primarily because I didn’t think I had the attention span to write a novel. And then I started writing for a living for other people (journalism, PR) and that killed my love for writing anything of my own.

But here I am. I’ve finished a novel. I’m close to a complete draft 0 on the sequel. I have THREE MORE hovering around in various states of first-draft completion. I have so many ideas. I may have been thinking of the short fiction form as a way to catalog some of them.

I’m not sure why I started writing short stories again; just because I had an idea and one came out of me, I think. But you know what? I don’t love reading short stories. I love reading novels, long form, I devour them. I love science, and science fiction, and fantasy. History. Romance. Demons. Witches. Magic. Making the paranormal … well … normal.

I love the long form. Love it. No turning back.

So I believe one thing I should do is shift away from letting these ideas become short stories unless they’re precursors to much longer stories. I might go back to short fiction at some point, and there’s a lot of appeal in the idea of creating multiple stories about side characters in the Universe my novel is set inside. But they deserve to be more than short stories. Novellas, at least.

And we all know from The Murderbot Diaries that novellas can still have an impact, drive a story, inspire a following. (Thanks, Martha Wells.)

Thanks, Woo. Two rejections this week. I feel better.