The agony of new writers re-inventing that same old wheel (no. 3)

This is the third article in a series of four about my personal experiences as an avid follower of my own daily horoscope.

Since Sapphire Star Publishing released The Quintessential Gemini in June 2012, I have often been asked if I am the main character, Katherine Dale. In this fun, romantic tale Katherine  lives her life according to her daily horoscope – as you can imagine that isn’t an ideal way to go through life, but it makes for an amusing story! Whilst I do follow my own horoscope – let’s say, avidly – I do not live my life according to what I read. How can you? It rarely gives something as obvious as an answer to a problem, but it does give an indication of when the planetary alignments are favourable. If you  have a big decision to make, then why not time it so that any good karma being sent out by the universe is a natural boost?

If you want to catch up with the other three articles in this series – article 1, article 2, article 4.

So, just how relevant and meaningful are those astrological forecasts? Here are some actually forecasts and what was happening in a particularly unusual time of my life – major changes were afoot!

Gemini, Saturday, 29 May 2010

Your Week Ahead: You don’t have to have a plan. You just have to have an intention. Right now, if you want to protect your sanity you must stop trying to persuade yourself that everything is ‘supposed to be’ a particular way. Things are as they are. Whether that’s good or bad, there’s only a very small amount that you can change through the sheer force of your will. The change you want will come when the cosmos is ready to bring it to you. That doesn’t mean you should forget about what you really want. You should keep your eyes open at all times for chances and seize them when they arise. Until or unless they do, don’t worry about them.

Real life: The truth was I was writing manuscripts (by then I had four completed and was part-way through no. five) and I had no master plan.  At the beginning of December 2010 I was offered a chance to take part in a free trial of an online tutorial on how to set up a website by a friend of my son’s.  When I couldn’t even get the initial password to work to access the tutorial I felt like a failure. I also had to set up a Twitter Account and join Facebook… I felt out of my depth and alone.  My debut novel was released in February 2011 to a flurry of sales that took it to no. 12 on Amazon.co.uk. No one knew me of course, but my forecasts continued to reassure me to keep going.  At times I felt I was re-inventing the wheel and I began linking up with other, even newer, writers and sharing the little knowledge I had learned.  It seemed crazy everyone going through the same painful learning curve and I kept thinking ‘what a waste of time, people could share knowledge acquired to allow them to concentrate on writing!’

 

Fast forward to the start of a new year:

 

Gemini, Monday, 24 January 2011

It’s going to be a good week. You will reach a new understanding and become more comfortable about a situation that has lately seemed awkward and disturbing. Meaningful exchanges will deepen the level of communication between you and the people who matter most to you. Non- verbal interaction will count for as much, if not significantly more, than conversation and dialogue. At a very profound and important level, a delightful bridge is being built and sooner or later, an important secret will be shared.

 

Real life:  January 2011 was a turning point for me.  I had by then met a lot of new writers via social media, some at the very start of their learning curve and some way ahead of me.  I began blogging about a support network Women Following Their Dream on my website.  It had lots of hits, but few came forward.  However, it was an idea that I couldn’t let go.  One of the new writers I made contact with online, Kit Domino, lived quite close to me and we met up for lunch.  We discussed the possibility of getting new writers together, perhaps by forming a lunch club and by then I had identified a list of names from people I’d met online and I began reaching out to them. Some ignored my emails, others didn’t understand…. words alone weren’t moving things forward and my stars were right, but I needed help and guidance…

Gemini, forecast for the month of June 2011

Your Monthly Forecast: There is nothing ordinary or normal about the situation you now face. If you can’t yet see what’s so special about it, keep watching and thinking. Somewhere in your world, an amazing coincidence is occurring. It is as significant as it is almost uncanny. Maybe, you can understand what I mean by all the above but you’re not at all convinced that any of it is good. Stay calm. June’s rare, powerful alignments insist that, whether or not you like what’s going on, it can’t be happening by accident.

Real life:  It quickly became clear to me that pushing forward to bring a group of new writers together to share knowledge and mutually support had to offer a real benefit.  The idea of setting up a website was one I kept putting off – I seriously doubted I had the skills to pull it off. I also realised this was going to be a huge responsibility if I took it on. I kept mulling it over in my head, but it was such a big step. I’d recently been introduced to meditation by medium and psychic Richard Holmes, it was during a meditation session that it all became clear. Everything seemed to be pushing me in the direction of setting up a group website. I didn’t have the skills, but even so I decided during that ‘session’ of enlightenment that I would begin looking at potential website templates. If I found one that felt ‘right’ I’d take that as a sign and worry about how I would do it later…

I wasn’t being guided solely by the current forecasts, in June 2010 I had commissioned a full birth chart reading that spanned the next ten years. When I first received it I was over-whelmed by the detail but gradually I worked through the massive document. It not only confirmed virtually everything from the daily, weekly, monthly forecasts but took it much deeper. At first I just could not believe much of what I was reading. As if it was someone else’s life and had no impact on my own. And yet all of the parts where my nature, personality traits and foibles were described, were spot on! There was no doubt at all that what I am is a true Gemini and that the planetary alignments at my birth still had influence over my life and my destiny:

Uranus Squares Mars
This transit of Uranus will find you will be entering a period when expressing yourself becomes very important. Vital Mars and impulsive Uranus combine to inject you with flashes of energy that simply must make their mark in the world. During this period you will have at your disposal much larger amounts of energy with which to assert yourself. Now you will be able to do things that you thought you would never have dared to do. You will be able to make yourself heard too amongst people with whom you would not usually associate. Freedom and the right for you to do as YOU want for a change will become of paramount importance to you.

Me? Putting my own interests first, rather than that of family and friends? Really? Well, something major was going to have to happen to steer me along that path….

 

We have a comment from a lovely lady who Emailed to say:

 “I have always struggled to make any sense of my forecasts, however that has never stopped me reading them!  After I read your first post I decided to check out my previous month’s forecast rather than going straight to the new monthly one.  Wow!  When I initially read it I had thought ‘what a load of rubbish,’ it said I was going to be doing some travelling and I knew there was no chance of that for financial reasons.  About a week ago my daughter rang to say both of my grandchildren had chicken pox and could I pop down to Devon to help out.  My husband decided to come too and that’s where we are now.  I had totally forgotten about the forecast and smiled after I re-read it.  Now I’m hooked – it’s retrospective forecast reading for me from now on!” Liz, Bristol.

 

Well, that Email did make me smile … thanks for visiting!