I have a lot of fear about the world right now. I also have a lot of grief — for Dolly Parton, for Tim Curry. (Can Death please stop taking queer icons?!) 

But one thing that I know for sure is that even when the headlines are terrifying and the wrong people are dying, art is worth making. 

I know art is worth making because at every point in my life, art has saved me. 

No, art isn’t food or shelter or clean water. But it’s something just as vital.

Art brings joy, and joy’s sisters: imagination and hope. Imagination is what brings an impoverished girl from Pigeon Forge to the world stage. Hope is what watching Dolly Parton soar gave to so many of us country poor growing up in the middle of nowhere: the affirmation that not only was it possible to get out (and help folks back home), but that you didn’t have to assimilate or sacrifice yourself in the process. You don’t have to be ashamed of where you come from.

I am only happy, I am only a working artist actually making a living at this thing because of library trips as a girl where I regularly checked out The Midwife’s Apprentice and Catherine, Called Birdy and Ella Enchanted, because of films like Clue that I watched over and over and over trying to figure out just what made them work. I only survived leaving an abusive husband and the evangelical church, and the subsequent shunning and shaming, because of songs like Dolly’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” because of the queer community that productions like Rocky Horror engendered.  

Art helps us make meaning. It brings brightness to the too-grim reality of our world. It helps us imagine something different, something better, not only for ourselves but for people around us. Fitting, I think, that my mayor Zohran Mamdani, who every day works at the vision of a New York that works for everyone, is himself married to an artist, Rama Duwaji. He speaks often of how she challenges and inspires him. Artists remind us to look at our lives and environments in new ways, to not merely autopilot but to intentionally engage. 

Your art gives your life meaning. Keeps you engaged. That alone is enough. What it does for you is enough.

Your book does not have to be a bestseller to change people’s lives. My memoir Heretic has only sold a few thousand copies, but I have been told by more people than I can count that it has changed their lives and their foundational understandings of themselves. Heretic saved me, and the fact that it’s saved others gives me so much peace. As my fellow astrologer Diana Rose Harper told me years ago, “If all you ever write is Heretic, you have done enough.”

But it’s not enough, to me, not because of an arbitrary goal around success, but because if I’m not writing, then I’m not connected to myself, let alone to the world.

By her own account, Dolly Parton wrote “almost” every day. She often said that she thought in rhyme and in rhythm, that writing was as natural to her as anything else. Whether she finished a whole song depended on the day, but she would write verses, lines, scribbles. For her, writing was a way of life. Dolly was, in so many ways, a writer’s writer, a woman for whom writing was an essential part of her very being.

When I wake up afraid of the geopolitics and grieving the loss of good people when bad people are still very much wreaking havoc, it’s tempting to just stay in bed. But writing is the best resistance I know. Writing brings me back to myself. Writing is always the remedy, the cure, the answer.

Art helps me imagine a different world. It helps my readers and friends and colleagues imagine a different world. And in a fascist regime, we cannot afford to cede one inch of hope or imagination. 

This is why I am so passionate about throwing the ladder down behind me, why I try to live by the ethos that a rising tide lifts all boats.

This is why I host free publishing Q&As and write so explicitly about “we don’t talk about Bruno” parts of the publishing process, like being on submission. 

This is why I am so real about money. 

This is also why I’m so passionate about publicly using every tool at my disposal, from industry relationships to witchcraft. 

This is why I dreamed up Book Deal Breakthrough, and why I’m running it this fall (registration closes in 5 days — more below).

In the coming years, I most want to be surrounded by other artists the system did not want to support, but who broke through anyway. 

I want other queer and trans folks, other women who grew up in high-control religions and escaped abusive marriages, other folks who grew up country poor to be out here making art in the mainstream.

I want your book to be in the world, and like so many women and queers who have come before, I believe that if we can use magic to make that happen, we should. 

You don’t need tons of experience or fancy tools to do magic. All you need is an open heart, a willingness to learn, and a belief in yourself. Rather like writing. 

Curiosity, imagination, hope. 

That’s it. That’s the recipe.

At the end of the day, after all the craft talk and bells and whistles, that’s genuinely all you need to bring a book into the world. 

And I want to help (spiritually, professionally) midwife your book along. 

I hope you wake up tomorrow emboldened by Dolly and Tim’s examples, by their unapologetic outloudness, by their maximalism and refusal to cede any part of themselves to the “shoulds” and “oughts.” 

In a fascist regime, hope and imagination are forms of resistance that, actively cultivated, plant seeds for a better tomorrow.

Here’s to planting seeds in the ground together.

P.S. Book Deal Breakthrough is my 10-week workshop that blends magical ritual with practical planning, for writers who want to get published in a way that’s both smart and soulful. It will run from September 13th to November 15th this fall.

Book Deal Breakthrough is a high-touch 10-week intensive that includes:

Book Deal Breakthrough is $2250, or 3 monthly payments of $750. Folks who pay in full will get a 30-minute 1:1 video call with me during the ten weeks.

Registration closes August 31st.