ARLAN БОБ МАЛЛИГАН WISE « THE « ABC АСТРОЛОГИЯ’ S OF ASTROLOGICAL, ЙОГА И СЛУЖЕНИЕ WRITING »
I have been leading writing workshops at the OPA retreats for the past two years. They get good feedback and produce good writers. When I saw that nobody else was giving writing instruction for astrologers and that there was a need for it, I jumped into the empty slot.
I’ ve always found writing to be an easier way of transmitting my thoughts than speaking them. I have five planets in Mercury-ruled signs and he is one of the final dispositors of my chart and so I read and I write. My Aquarian moon in the 12th house finds comfort in words. I am finding a new way to honor my dear friend Mercury by leading these writing workshops.
There was a time when I took as many writing classes as I could find in my vicinity. I took workshops in writing short stories, writing poetry, and writing personal memories, I wrote an astrology forecast for my local newspaper for two decades. I became the person who the newspaper editor would call when she needed someone to cover an offbeat subject, like interviewing the animal communicator who had come to give a talk, or write a review on the book on Buddhism recently published by a local author. I wrote articles for OPA’ s journal, The Career Astrologer, and served as the editor for a few terms. I wrote and wrote and wrote.
Then, one day when I was asked to submit topics for the MAC conference in Cleveland, I first worked up a talk I called“ When Mercury Rode the Mail Train” which profiled three of the early, pre-Internet astrology columnists and writers, Patrick Walker, Eleanor Bach, and Edie Custer. I also came up with the idea of teaching a writing class. I’ d heard talks on how to write for astrological journals and for astrology books, but never saw a class on just doing it. I gave the class and it went well. That became the seed for the three-day writing workshop I do at OPA retreats.
What do we do in these writing workshops? We write. We encourage each other with mutual support while we write and then read what we have written. I start with each participant writing out his / her goals for the weekend. Then I hand them a sheet of exercises, which ask them to write a one-sentence explanation of a series of planets in signs such as Mars in Gemini Square Uranus in Pisces. I ask them to compose four sentences about today, and then to translate a series of synastry aspects like Sun in Leo married to Moon in Taurus. And, write on how to explain Retrograde Mercury to a fundamentalist Christian.
On the following days we look at each other’ s charts and assess our writing strengths and weaknesses. We look at authors’ charts to see what drives them to write and what themes we find. I read to them passages on writing from different well-known writers. We, and I do it too, write a short article that I submit to The Career Astrologer so everyone gets the opportunity to see their writing in print. We also discuss and start long-term projects which the participants will continue to work on after they return home.
The value of attending a writing workshop comes in finding one’ s writing voice through the action of writing. One of the objects of the class is to evict from memory the voice of that high school teacher who gave you a C- on a paper and said you could never write well. It is validating to write with others and receive mutual support while an intimacy builds over the three days in a safe and secure container. You learn that you are a good writer, and, yes, you can write. ■
The Career Astrologer Volume 20 • Number 1 • Winter 2011
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