Something to stoke your winter fires
Hey peach,
It’s the last newsletter of 2025...wtaf?! I wanted to leave you with a few morsels to chew over during these last few days of the calendar year. About wintering.
I’m not one of those people who believe January is for fresh starts and new goals and the grind, grind, grind. The natural world and the occult one both view January as a threshold, a liminal space where everything pauses to take a breath or ask a question.
It’s a time to turn inward and work on the self before moving forward. And that kinda made me think of the copy of Burn After Writing by Sharon Jones that I picked up for Christmas 2024. It encourages you to bare your soul through various prompts, then rip out the page and burn it.
The point is to explore your creative ideas, thoughts, and feelings without being performative. Analogue creation, made privately and honestly, with the intent of imminent destruction.
And there’s something powerful in that.
So, here are some writing prompts for you to explore in a similar way. Just you, a pen, a notebook, and a flame.
Bear your soul for no one but yourself. Be brutally honest. Speak things to the page that you’d never dare reveal to another soul. Excavate them from yourself for no reason other than to purify with fire.
Plus, it’s fun to burn things.
From the soul, to the flame: questions for your shadow self
Pick one, do them all, or make your own list; either way, go deep! No one will ever see this.
What do you want from writing that you’d never admit publicly?
If no one ever read your work again, what would you finally allow yourself to write?
Whose approval are you unconsciously writing for?
What kind of recognition do you pretend you don’t care about but secretly yearn for?
If career success didn’t rely so heavily on likability, what would your work look like?
What do you resent having to write (and why haven’t you stopped)?
What story do you tell yourself (or others) about your writing that doesn’t feel true anymore?
What project are you keeping alive out of habit rather than belief or passion?
What are you scared to finish because it would force you to take the next step?
Write one truth you aren’t ready to share with anyone.
Now burn, baby, burn! Safely, mind.
🌝 Wolf Moon – 3rd January
Lean living · Liminality · Self-discovery
🔮 Freelance focus: The Tower (reversed)
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t see The Tower card as a bad omen or portent of doom. I see it as an opportunity to release the structures, beliefs, and relationships that don’t serve. To dismantle it all and start again.
We’ve pulled the reversed card, which suggests that our writing collective is resisting or delaying change. Perhaps you’re being confronted with a chance to try something new, rather than an ending?
Give this a think as the calendar year comes to a close (maybe use a few of the burning prompts to help?) and consider moving into 2026 with a determination to demolish what doesn’t serve and build something newer and stronger in its place.
Other shit you might like
✉️ Aligned Creatives: Your feed is not your fate – read
💡 Vikki Ross: 25 things I liked in 2025 – read
🐉 earwyrm (my DIY occult music and arts zine) – support
Blessed be!
Cowners