Happy October and happy autumnal vibes.

In this voice note, I wanted to share the story of how The Story Temple came to be. Because it wasn’t planned. It kind of happened by accident.

A couple years ago, I was sitting in meditation, frustrated with my own writing and equally frustrated with a client’s manuscript I was evaluating. Both of us had the same problem: we couldn’t figure out what the hell we were trying to say.

As I’m sitting there overthinking everything, I grabbed a tarot deck I had next to me on the sofa. I started pulling cards for guidance, and kept getting swords. Over and over. Five cards, all swords.

At first I thought the cards weren’t giving me answers. But then I heard clear as day: “No, the cards ARE giving you the answer. They’re telling you what’s wrong.”

Swords represent the Air element in tarot. And that’s when it clicked. What if the problem wasn’t the writing itself but that the Air element was off? What if we both just needed clearer vision and conceptual clarity?

Once I saw it that way, everything made sense. And I realized Air wasn’t alone. Fire, Water and Earth were all there too, working together like they do in nature. No element works in a silo. They feed each other.

That changed everything. I flew through that manuscript evaluation. I finished my own essay. And after that, I couldn’t unsee this pattern. Every piece of writing that came across my desk, I saw these four elements. Every social media post I wrote, I’d check the elemental balance before posting.

I started wondering if anyone else noticed this. The answer was definitely no. It’s a unique way of looking at writing and storytelling.

Here’s what drove me to create The Story Temple: I was tired of the generic, surface-level writing advice that runs rampant on the internet. “Your pacing is off, fix your sentence lengths.” “Your character is flat, add personality traits to make them more relatable.” That stuff doesn’t get to the root of anything.

And as a priestess, we go to temples to study. So it made sense to me to create a temple. A mystery school. Kind of like Hogwarts, but for writing.

I wanted a place where writing is viewed as sacred work, because it is. Writing is a spiritual practice whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction. Words are spells. There’s energy in your words that can be felt when you speak them and when you write them.

My vision for The Story Temple is a place where writers who want to go deeper with their work have an academic setting to learn in. Where they can bring their whole selves to the page without fear of being judged or ridiculed — especially writers who look like me.

In essence, I created it for me because I thought it would be really cool to attend a mystery school like this. And now I get to be the High Priestess of this temple, teaching writers about the energetics of their writing to create work that truly connects.

Whether you’re simply visiting the Temple or a paid subscriber using the templates and teachings to improve your work - thank you. It warms my heart knowing you’re in the temple with me.

Don’t forget: The first full episode of Creative Code Switch drops November 5. Subscribe now so you don’t miss it.

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