busy in bardo: the week of september 14, 2025

Because this particular missive has so many announcements, and because, tbh, everyone I know is going through a hard time and could use the encouragement, this week ahead is free to read for everyone. Please note that there is a ~thing~ about Substack, et al. at the very end that I’d appreciate any App Store subscribers in particular checking! <3

📚 The last Showing Up to the Work of the year starts TOMORROW! (Zoom link goes out via email first thing in the morning.) If you’re looking for a start-of-school-year productivity sprint, this is it.

🪩 My first book Heretic: A Queer Revolt Against Evangelicalism, Empire, and the Lies We Are Sold comes out in paperback on September 23rd! Order from my local bookstore to get a signed copy!

(Also: I recently got a surprisingly scathing note from someone who was upset at how much I promote my work in this newsletter. So I guess this is the part where I say that if the ICYMI section bothers you that much, well, I don’t know what to tell you except that some of us don’t have family support, generational wealth, or a spouse whose work subsidizes our art. Sorry if my actually being a working artist bursts your bubble!✌🏼)

all times are eastern

The makings of a good date night are also the makings of a generative writing session. Whether your focus is input, along the lines of watching a related period film or documentary, or output via words on the page, this is supportive of connection with your relationships, period. Including your relationship with Creativity.

Also: If there’s a day to pitch this week, it’s Monday (maybe Tuesday). Not necessarily because of the Venus-Mars, but because the rest of the week has funky Mercury aspects that could lend themselves to tech snafus and miscommunications, or simply overwhelmed editors deleting everything.

The tension between what to say and how to say it strikes. This may look like the push-pull of good faith debating on social, or simply reckoning with the ethical question of how to represent someone (or something) on the page.

Because of this, it’s an especially good time to listen to music or go outside. Let the rhythm of sound and the natural world un-stick your language.

You’ve done the hard revisions. You’ve committed to generative rituals. Now, it’s time to make the work beautiful. Today, the ruler of writers leaves its domain for one of Venus’ homes. And oh, does Mercury thrive when Venus is away and they get to play.

In conversation and relationships and natal charts, Mercury in Libra is more famous for its ability to see all sides, for its diplomacy, and occasionally for its indecision, but when it comes to the written word, it wants to make the language sing. Take a short break from the work so you can return to it fresh, and when you come back, get ready to unleash the Aesthetics.

Anecdotally, I also think this is an excellent time for interviews and research. A lot of investigative reporters have this placement natally; it makes for a compelling journalistic project!

A great moment for channeling dreamy images, writing sex scenes, and/or experimenting with language. Less great for business communication (pitches, conversations, events), where specificity may get lost.

Read Mary Oliver, Virginia Woolf, or your favorite spicy romance to get inspired.

If you’re up late writing, get ready for things to get weird. Plots take a left turn; memories get unlocked; the thesaurus gets opened. If you’re usually asleep by this time, it’s an ideal eve to set intentions for messages from spirit or prophetic dreams.

What started off as weird may trend dark — in a Descent of Inanna, intentional underworld journey kind of way. Big “we gotta go deep in order to go broad” energy. Good for automatic writing or channeling, for a late-night research deep dive, for going to bed watching a horror film.

On her day, Venus shifts signs from bright, sunny Leo to cool, calculated Virgo. This is a Venus — which is to say, beauty, art, relationship, culture — that is insistent on purification and refinement. (Not purity politics, though. Let’s leave that at the door.)

It is in Virgo, however, that Venus is most tempted by the myth of perfectionism. This is the reason that traditional Hellenistic astrologers say that Venus in Virgo is in her “fall,” although I think the term is better assigned to Venus transits than the natal placement of a person’s birth chart. This Venus transit, this period of time, that we all experience — no matter where Venus lies in our chart — invites us to consider how we might revise, edit, or otherwise prune our artistic desires and projects, while being lured by the modern extreme of perfection.

Something artistic or aesthetic gets jostled loose. There may be some discomfort forcing the loosening (a rejection, an unexpected delay), but ultimately, this is a productive opportunity to look at your work in a new light.

This transit may also look relational: an old friend from the past reaching out, or a chance run-in at the grocery store that opens a new pathway.

First, you may not know that Substack is currently fucking with writers’ money in a bad way. (And if you’re on Patreon, you know this story already.) Substack is now allowing purchases and sign-ups through the App Store. This is the kind of thing that sounds good but actually isn’t.

This means that in addition to Substack’s 10%, Apple is now taking an even larger cut from subscriptions. I recently got an email receipt sharing that I’d made a whopping $70 in the App Store — after Apple took their nearly $40 fee (for those math’ing, that’s a nearly 40% cut of your newsletter dollars). For those of us for whom our newsletters are a major income stream, this is not sustainable. Substack’s 10% is one thing, and a fee that honestly I’m happy to pay in exchange for ease of platform use. But Apple taking nearly 40% more on top of that? No. No no no no no.

What’s more, Substack is not allowing writers to collect the emails of subscribers who sign up using the App Store. This defeats the entire purpose of being on this platform, where control over one’s newsletter list is a key selling point. (Loving reminder to folks On Here that you should be exporting your list regularly!) Substack has slowly been moving away from being a newsletter platform, shifting into a social media content Frankenstein, and denying writers our own subscriber’s emails (so that we are dependent on Substack for an audience) is, frankly, a five alarm fire.

While there is presently no comparable competitor to Substack, for which reason I have very publicly stayed in this ~problematic space~, I am, for the first time in years, considering shifting astrology for writers off Substack — or at least shifting the paid offerings. (Although Substack guts us that way, too: it’s against the ToS to have paid subscribers here AND link to memberships / paid content hosted elsewhere.)

tl;dr Discoverability here is simply not worth losing the money necessary to pay my bills, so I’m exploring my options. Changes (TM) coming soon; I’m just sitting tight til eclipse season passes before doing anything major (especially since these eclipses are *cough* hitting my 2nd and 8th houses.)

Comments are on! As always, happy to answer questions.

Thank you for reading Astrology for Writers. If you enjoyed this edition, please share it with your writerly, artsy, and/or witchy friends.