WriteHive Online Conference 2024: Tarot for Writers
Image by Mira Cosic, Astrologer from Pixabay
Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here!
I enjoyed Kris Waldherr’s presentation on “Tarot for Writers,” which was a neat look at the ways in which she has used tarot cards and tarot card reading as inspiration for writing. She suggested using tarot cards for plotting, character development, feedback as you’re writing or revising, and a way to dissolve writer’s block. She also talked about using just the images on the cards as inspiration for ekphrasic writing (or writing inspired by art). Other options for the use of tarot cards in writing can be drawing a card and writing, then drawing another card when you get to a point where you need to continue the plot, and so on until the story is done. You can also use a single card as a sort of warm-up for writing or a way to focus your thoughts before writing.
She also emphasized that you don’t need to fully memorize everything about the tarot deck to use it as a form of inspiration, noting that you can use your personal reactions to the images on the cards or the memories that they might invoke. This was a great piece of advice for me because though I’ve been interested in tarot for a long time, I’ve never entirely grasped all of the assigned meanings and often just go with my “vibes” related to the cards–I recently used a friend’s deck to assign tarot cards to the characters in a game that they run, and my gut instincts turned out just about perfect for the majority of the characters! In addition, she shared a list of questions you can ask yourself as you interpret any given card, which would make an excellent basis for both tarot reading and using the cards to inspire your writing.
If you’re interested in learning more about using tarot cards in your writing, you can watch the roughly 40 minute presentation at WriteHive’s YouTube channel!
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