When my youngest of three children started kindergarten, I returned to teaching English at the community college after a ten-year hiatus. I became so disillusioned with problems in the classroom (students texting under desktops and aggressively asking me to alter their grades), I decided instead to teach adults who were in love with writing.

I applied to teach at a writing retreat in the desert that I would end up returning to for three amazing retreats. (A Room of Her Own Foundation has since moved to online offerings.) Because I was still raising children, everything I pitched had to be joyful, stress-free, and cost my family minimal outlay. Though poetry remains my first love, by the third retreat, I landed on a “tangential love” for an opportunity that might provide an income stream on the side.

Back in college when my love-life imploded, I discovered the tarot, a tool for looking at aspects of our lives we don’t understand. A tarot deck is like a deck of playing cards, only there are 78 cards comprised of 22 soul cards (The Fool or The Lovers), 16 people cards (Kings and Queens modern deck-makers give contemporary names), and 40 “daily life” cards (challenges and triumphs). As a writer, I fell in love with the vibrant imagery and arc of psychological stages depicted on the cards. I journaled to each card, examining my past and present. Over the ensuing twenty years, I stayed with my tarot writing practice and learned to read for others.

By the third AROHO retreat, I decided to bring that process forward for others and pitched one-on-one tarot consults designed to help writers explore the next step in their creative process. I helped fund my retreats with my earnings and met lifelong friends, one of whom became the publisher for my first poetry collection.

Between retreats, I created and taught tarot writing courses through an online school (Story Circle Network), using the tarot cards as a map for digging into situations and motivations, inviting students to point the arrow of inquiry to the most pressing part of their lives or writing project. Over the years, students have used their tarot journaling entries to seed writing across forms from playwriting to poetry to novel chapters.

I revised my worksheets over the years and moved to teaching from my website. Uploading worksheets felt redundant so I considered using them to form a book. I went back to my poetry editor, and asked, “How about those poetry sales…?!” We laughed. She said, “How about you write a book about tarot?”

I collected my teaching materials and reached out to my students for sample work including poems they’d written based on the tarot. Drafting the book gave me the confidence to apply to teach online through a university continuing education program.

Tarot has marvelous applications for writers. You might enjoy Corinne Kenner’s Tarot for Writers. Jessa Crispin, creator of The Creative Tarot, references artists, movies, music, literary figures and thinkers and more to bring tarot to life. Photo-journalist Bill Haigwood created his Journeying the Sixties: Counterculture Tarot and accompanying book for which he matched photos and tarot energies to the time period. We live in a tarot renaissance during which dozens of new decks flood the market every year. The possibilities for inspiration are endless.

Your Turn:

•    Make a list of your “tangential loves” that give you great joy; journal about what you love about each one; brainstorm classes you could teach and craft sample writing prompts.

•    Research organizations and retreat centers for which you can teach over zoom and pitch a writing class about your favorite “tangential love.”

•    After testing out your material, teach from your own website.

•    Collect your worksheets, reach out to your students, and write a book based on your course.

•    Use your book to attract students and apply to teach in larger venues.

BIO: Tania Pryputniewicz is the author of the full-length poetry collection November Butterfly (Saddle Road Press, 2014), Heart’s Compass Tarot: Discover Tarot Journaling and Create Your Own Cards (Two Fine Crows Books, 2021), and a memoir-in-poems, The Fool in the Corn (Saddle Road Press, 2022). A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Tania lives in Coronado and teaches poetry and tarot-inspired writing classes for San Diego Writers, Ink and Antioch University’s Continuing Education program. She lives in Coronado with her husband, three children, Siberian Husky and formerly feral feline named Luna.

http://www.taniapryputniewicz.com
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