I turned to the tarot out of desperation.

I haven’t written in over a month, due to a bad reaction to medicine I was taking.  The medicine wasn’t toxic until I added a second one, depakote, to prevent migraines.

The depakote made the first medicine toxic.  I had stomach ache, headache, light-headed, dizzy, confused, anxious, couldn’t eat… I couldn’t write, and I had trouble reading.

So  I turned to the tarot, used by John Steinbeck, Umberto Ecco,  Stephen King and other novelists to get ideas for characters and plots.  I also found a copy of the i-ching for activists.  I am writing a book about activists and so I picked it up.  I was already researching lucent dreaming when I came across a passage that reported that successful novelists and writers have interviewed their characters and even their entire novel while dreaming.  The results were dramatic with major artistic breakthroughs reported.

Since I wasn’t writing or reading anyway, I turned to the tarot, i ching and lucid dreaming to get a leg up on  the novel while I was sick.

I was able to turn the cards, read a little, and practice remembering my dreams which I have for four days, since I started feeling a little better.  The medicine that was making me sick must be tapered off and it took weeks to get off it.   I had a busy Saturday and Sunday was a picnic for a mental health group I facilitate each week, so I wasn’t able to write.  The last dose of the medicine was Thursday night.  I am finally feeling a little better.

Projection– looking a picture cards to see a plot or character traits– is something that I can do when I am not feeling 100% and as I wrote earlier, has been used by other successful, award-winning novelists.  The i ching is simpler.  Lucid dreaming– so far I am remembering my dreams which is the first step in being aware of the dream, while dreaming.  So I can intercede, visit the setting, interview the characters and talk to the novel  i am writing.