Thursday February 13

Moon in Leo

So yesterday I had coffee with a friend.

She’s someone I met through this freelance feature writing lark that I do.

We got talking about pitching, and story ideas, and the types of articles that we want to write, and the types that we don’t.

I mentioned that I’d been doing some mainstream pitching, but that it wasn’t really what I wanted to be doing. I want to be writing about travel and wellbeing from a freelance viewpoint, but am finding it tough to break out of the astrology mode and get that first travel byline.

Why break from astrology writing, I hear you ask?

Quite simply, because it doesn’t pay… and a little less simply, because I don’t want to confine my profile to a single subject.

The fact is, there are very few publications that pay contributors for astrology, and even fewer who pay appropriately. Further, the style of astrology I write, and want to continue to write, is aimed at a more mainstream market, which narrows my publishing opportunities even further. My ultimate aim is to bring astrology to a wider audience- and to teach you how to do it yourself. DIY astro for the real world, if you like.

At the moment, most of the astrology writing I do, I do for free. If I want to continue to do that and still live, I need to diversify.

This doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to write about astrology- of course I will…I love it. After all, that’s why I’m developing and writing a series of e-books that I’ll self-publish. It’s also why I’m continuing to pitch my “diet” astro book to publishers. But that’s all longer-term stuff, and doesn’t deal with immediate resourcing issues. Besides, I love travel- and I love writing about it, so why not get paid for it?

As I was talking to my friend yesterday, and listening to her suggest alternatives, I became conscious of the roadblocks and excuses that I was putting in place for myself. I became conscious of how stubbornly I was holding onto these. It was there every time I countered a suggestion with the word “but.”

I recognized in that, the fear that accompanies a real effort to break into the travel writing market- because it, like my fiction, means so much to me. I don’t want to fail, and while ever I’m not really trying, I’m also not really failing. The rock. The hard place.

What I was feeling yesterday was my ego clashing hard up against my fears. What I was feeling was yesterdays Sun square Saturn. Other conversations during the day had a similar theme. Suggestions, helpful ones, were being made that challenged my ideas, my viewpoint- and surely I should be able to go it alone? Surely, I know best? Not necessarily. The Sun at 23 Aquarius currently forms a yod with my natal Jupiter and Uranus, and is square Neptune. Mars is square natal Jupiter. What I’m feeling is exactly how I should be feeling right now.

The Sun square Saturn influence is with us again today, but the mood has changed. For a start, the Moon is in Leo, so whilst this is a fixed sign to add to whatever it is you’re stubbornly refusing to see, there’s a different element working here, a little of the emotion is taken out.

What will be forming is a fixed T-square…and as we know, T-squares have huge potential for breakthroughs- it’s a tension thing. The key to getting the most out of this one is Mars. How much do you really want it? Who can help you get there? The Sun/Mercury- Mars trine indicates that there are alternatives and ideas that perhaps you’re refusing to consider, or trying not to see.

Although Mercury is retrograde, as it moves back into Aquarius, some of the emotional attachment you have to whatever it is that needs reviewing, reflecting on, refining will be removed. Perhaps it’s time to put aside the pride and the fear and consider a different point of view.