Magick,  rites of passage,  rituals,  Spirituality,  the writing life

Manifestations #amwriting #DoMagick

Manifestation

I want to take a moment to talk about the manifestation of the magick I’ve been working within the past two years. Done right, all magick will manifest. It just may not manifest in the ways we expect or always want. We can try to be picky/choosy, but sometimes the divine has a mind of its own and the universe, the Daemonic, gives us what it sees fit to make us stronger and to make us re-evaluate our goals or strengthen our skills before helping us obtain the very thing we want. Oftentimes, in hindsight, and sometimes in foresight  -or outright – we see exactly why what we manifest is precisely what we need, even if it was unexpected. It takes someone who is, in the very least, introspective and aware to sometimes notice what’s actually going on. Thankfully, in this situation, I’ve been both.

The magick I’ve been working in the past two years, a lot of it in conjunction with the DoMagick challenges, has been all about my fiction writing career. It’s been about seeing that my work reaches a much larger audience. So I’ve done magick to this end. Summoning my muse. Working with the Sorath model for attention (to my books) and opportunity. Working with Paimon to eliminate distractions. Working with sigils to draw income with those particular books. Working to bring stronger productivity into my life.

All of this did a couple of things

  1. It increased the interest in my Audrey Brice titles significantly.
  2. It threw a lot of opportunities at me. Most of which I said yes to, which helped further increase the visibility of my books.

What it didn’t do

  1. Eliminated distractions.
  2. Increase productivity.

So why didn’t those last two things work? Because with increased opportunity comes less time (lost productivity), increased responsibility, and more distraction. With increased visibility comes more detractors/distractors, and more opportunity. This has been one of the lessons of Sorath. If you seek to have your work showcased – center-stage in Sorath’s light – expect people to pay attention and to have an excess of opportunity, responsibility, and yes – even critical discourse – thrown in your general direction — by the bucketload.

What opportunities this magick brought me

  1. The benefit of being able to attend numerous trade shows.
  2. The opportunity to lead my indie writers’ group.
  3. The opportunity to speak and teach at a variety of venues.
  4. The opportunity to blog and vlog with some of my favorite authors.
  5. The opportunity to meet new people, make new friends, and get involved in some great marketing with other writers.
  6. The opportunity to meet some of my readers face-to-face (the best part if you ask me).

What I learned from saying yes to all of these opportunities

  1. You can’t say yes to all the things. You’re only one person with 24 hours in each day. When you take on too much, you don’t have time for the thing that matters — the work itself. The whole reason I write the stories I write is because I love the characters, the worlds, and the stories that play out in my brain. I have to tell these characters’ stories. Getting it out on paper is cathartic. Not to mention, writing fiction is my happy place.
  2. I have been forced to learn the hard way that sometimes you have to let go of some opportunities to regain the time to do the work. I’ve spent the last year being a very social, vocal writer — but not so much a writing one. That’s a problem.
  3. There is a fine balance between administration, marketing, socializing, and opportunity — and being able to get the work done.

What I gained, career-wise,  from saying yes to these opportunities

  1. Friends! Tons of writing friends who I love dearly and will keep hanging out with, hopefully for years to come!
  2. Knowledge about my industry and ideas to put into practice to bring more readers to my books.
  3. I am a MUCH better public speaker today than I was even a year ago.
  4. A lot of experience setting up events. I am actually very good at coordinating events – but I learned I don’t like it very much. It’s time-consuming and frustrating waiting for people to get back to you, and even more frustrating when you have to prod people (constantly) to get back to you. I also hate having to stop everything I’m working on at a moments notice to jump to take care of a detail that was forgotten.
  5. I was a finalist for my writing group’s Independent Writer of the Year award in 2017. Never even considered that would be something I would be up for.
  6. Thirteen Covens won a friggin’ award! That was just a fantastic, amazing thing. Again, I never thought any of my fiction would win an award. Ever.
  7. The final push I needed to go out on my own for Denver Comic Con 2019  (Which is now Denver Pop Culture Con 2019) – even if friends and I are putting together our tables for more space.

What I’ve learned about myself

  1. I am no more awkward than anyone else. Everyone is uncomfortable and awkward in new or people-y situations.
  2. I am no busier than anyone else. I’m just more high strung about it.
  3. I have a life that some find enviable – so I should pause every now and again and practice gratitude.
  4. Along that same vein, some people would love to have the problems I have, like deadlines and needing to find cover art, or having to do marketing and pay quarterly taxes. When I feel the urge to complain, I need to stop and remind myself that these are good problems to have.
  5. I know how to manage my schedule just fine – I just don’t like surprises that interrupt my schedule and throw it off.
  6. I don’t have writer’s block, I am just focused on all the to-dos (which is paralyzing and overwhelming) and I need to be focusing on one thing at a time.

Bottom Line

I need to learn to balance work with everything that comes with being in the spotlight before I’m ready for that level of attention to my work. Which is why all the magick I’ve been doing piled it on thick. When push comes to shove – can I handle it? I think I can, but I need to choose my opportunities with more discernment and a realistic assessment of the workloads I can handle (before it starts impairing the work), and I need to exercise more focus on the work itself and not the vast amount of distraction that comes with attention.  My journey here is not over, but I think it’s super important to share it here so other magicians can see how magick may manifest outside our expectations to show us where we need work before we pursue what we want.

What could have happened is I could have learned that I don’t want all the opportunity and attention and that maybe having popular books wasn’t for me. What I actually discovered is as long as I don’t take on too much and I keep writing and never lose focus on that being the main goal — the rest can be navigated quite easily.

Steph is an award winning and bestselling author of thrilling steamy and paranormal romances, dark urban fantasy, occult horror-thrillers, cozy mysteries, contemporary romance, sword and sorcery fantasy, and books about the esoteric and Daemonolatry. A Daemonolatress and forever a resident of Smelt Isle, she is happily married and cat-mom to three pampered house cats. Her muse is a demanding sadistic Dom who often keeps her up into the wee hours of the morning. You can contact her at swordarkeereon@gmail.com

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