Today was the Poughkeepsie Area Wrimo Kickoff Party. We had it in the back room at Panera, which was a nice change from our previous strategy of squishing seven people with laptops around two tables in the front. It was fun, and great to see everyone again, but you know… it really reinforced the fact that I have NO IDEA WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT. And to make matters worse, Mom just made me open a fortune cookie (after I wrote NO) and it said, “The problems of today will be buried by the sands of time.” As if I need a REMINDER about time. Which is slipping by much too fast. Less than a week until NaNo starts. And… nothing!

Okay, dramatic masters class has to end or I will never get my mind straight. I do have a plan. I decided to try to incorporate Tarot into my writing process for this year’s NaNo, since I have no ideas. I’ve started going over my notebook with all my Tarot card notes. I came across the Empress:

See the pearl necklace she’s wearing? I have a note on various interpretations for this card, one being that the necklace is a symbol of “pearls of wisdom.” So that got me thinking, what if there’s a girl in high school who has a pearl necklace, and she wears it to class on the days that she will have a test because she calls them her pearls of knowledge and they help her to do well on tests. I haven’t yet decided if they have true magical power, or if she just believes that they do.

So with that small kernel of a character idea, I will do a Tarot reading (or several) with her as the Querent, to see some ideas of who she is, what lies in her past and present, and what could happen in her future. Since I got the idea from the Rider-Waite image of the card I will use my RW deck for the reading. I also have a deck from G&S at Borders, the Tarot Nova, but the cards don’t have the RW images so I don’t use the textbook definitions of the cards. When I do readings with Tarot Nova, I go with more of a gut instinct, and what I see in those images.

For the record, I also have the Universal Angel Cards, which each have a single word. I might pull cards from this if I get writer’s block, but I’m not sure.