My Queen of Swords Writing Moment(s)
Queen of Swords is about having the courage to show up and meet yourself on the page – to face yourself as you really are, not the ideal version of what you want to say.
It’s the opposite of perfectionism.
Sally-Shakti Willow as the Queen of Swords
When I was writing my PhD, this is how I would write: I would spend hours, if not days, if not weeks… sitting at the laptop writing NOTHING. Not one single word. Until I got so close to the deadline that I realised I just had to write SOMETHING. If I was going to have any chance of getting my chapter in on time, I’d better start writing NOW.
I would start writing. Telling myself to just write ANYTHING, and not worry about whether it was good enough. I could worry about that part later. For now, I just needed to write. So I would – at last – write.
Once I started writing, I’d relax into it a bit. I’d get into my flow after a while and allow the thoughts that I’d been wrestling with to make their way onto the page.
If I got stuck on something – like a citation I was missing, or a word I wanted to replace with something better, or an idea I wanted to expand on, or something I wasn’t sure about – I’d highlight it in yellow and keep writing. Taking the action of highlighting the part that needed reworking helped to settle my nervous system by telling the critical part of my brain that I would go back to it later and take another look. This enabled me to carry on writing until the end of the draft without carrying that worry with me.
Then, when I’d finished the draft, I’d give myself some downtime (if I had it!) and come back to the writing again to look at it with fresh eyes. With fresh eyes, I can make the adjustments and revisions that I need to make, and then look over the finished piece a final time before submission.
This is writing.
Writing is about getting the words down on the page. And then revisiting them and revising them. And letting them go when it’s time to submit them.
That’s it.
All the perfectionism was a form of fear that was stopping me from writing. Once I gave myself permission to actually start writing, I wrote. And what I wrote was – usually, ultimately – good enough.
As a Doctoral Researcher, I noticed something about myself when I started talking to other PhD writers and supporting them to write their thesis. I saw that perfectionism is a very real form of fear in academic writing. It can come from a lot of external pressure around the quality – and quantity – of writing that a researcher needs to produce. And it can also come from a lot of internal pressure in the voice of our own “inner critic”.
That word “critic” is an interesting one. As a doctoral researcher, I had a very strong “inner critic”. But I also had a very strong capacity for critical analysis. It’s the key skill that a doctoral researcher is likely to have. It’s what gets us into the position of doing a PhD in the first place. Because we are VERY good at analysing, critical thinking, questioning, evaluating. It’s what we’re best at. And we’re some of the best people in the world at it.
Critical thinking was my biggest asset as a researcher.
It was also my biggest hindrance as a writer.
The problem was, I would turn it in towards myself – especially towards my own writing, which I would judge in comparison to every published work I’d ever read. My own words were never good enough by that standard.
Because I was writing my first draft. I was getting down my raw ideas. I wasn’t writing the finished version of a text for publication, with a team of editors and peer-reviewers to help me refine it.
It was just me. And the laptop.
I had to let go of that inner critic. At least for long enough to actually get the words down onto the page. And then I could take another look later to see if they were good enough.
They usually were. If they weren’t, I’d edit and redraft them until they were. No big deal.
But that battle with my inner critic is probably what took the majority of the time during my PhD. It’s what kept me silent when I would have wanted to speak out. It’s what kept me small and stuck and insecure and uncertain. And every time I needed to write, I had to do battle with my own fear – again and again.
⚔️ Enter the Queen of Swords ⚔️
Unbalanced, she’s my fear, my perfectionism, and – absolutely – my inner critic. Reversed, she’s an invitation for me to witness these parts of myself and to hold them with compassion. To remember that my greatest strength is also my greatest challenge, so that I can learn to hold them both together.
Because when I can learn to integrate my own Queen of Swords energies, she becomes the courage I need to get my words down on the page. After that, she can become the clarity I need to edit what I have written.
Queen of Swords is also the energy of creating firm boundaries and accountability – to reclaim my writing time and stick to it.
I’m also learning that I find it supportive to do this with others. I am absolutely most productive in my writing when I have time scheduled in to write with other writers.
This is how the Queen of Swords is keeping me accountable and keeping me writing – even after I’ve finished my PhD.