This Week's Writerly Tarot: The Four of Wands

There's a saying about laurels—you shouldn't rest on them. They make a comfy nest spot, tis true, but comfort can lead to laziness. And laziness leads to more laziness and soon you're in a laziness spiral.

However...there's no reason you can't hoist your laurels high and dance under them for a while. Which is exactly what the Four of Wands suggests you do.

The Wands are the suit of passion and creativity, the element of fire and all the sparking and igniting and kindling and blazing that accompanies it. Writers recognize this feeling as being "in the zone" of a creative project, the feverish, timeless burn as the words flow and entire universes of potential shimmer into being.

The Fours, however, are the stop signs of the universe. They straighten the edges. They capture all that energy and hold it, however temporarily, in one spot. You might think this kind of clash would result in tension, but the Four of Wands manages a yin/yang balance—fiery but contained, if only for a short time.

This week, let the Four of Wands remind you to celebrate all that your work has wrought. Instead of looking ahead to deadlines and tallying up word counts, take time to rejoice and honor this present moment of accomplishment. For me, this means having a beer on the beach with friends and celebrating the publication of my fifth book (woo-hoo!) even as the deadline for the sixth approaches.

For you? Well, I'm not the one to answer that, am I? But I'll look for you under a beribboned canopy somewhere, and we can hoist our glasses to each other. At some future point, we can get back to work. But for now? OPA!