Last time, I wrestled with what it means to “do a good job” when the Critical Inner Parent is no longer calling the shots. If I’m no longer measuring myself against exhaustion and comparison, what metric am I using?
Turns out, the answer is an archetype that’s been with me since childhood. But realizing this required disrupting another exhausting habit of mine—reading romance book reviews in hopes of finding The One Right Way.
Here’s the setup: I’ve known for a while that reading my own book reviews is bad news bears. I don’t do it. Ever. But I mistakenly thought reading other people’s book reviews was fine, and not only fine, but a smart way to “keep my finger on the market’s pulse.” (Note to self: whenever you’re thinking in jargon, it’s probably bullshit.)
Remember those Pride and Prejudice reviews I shared last time?
It took me ages to realize that what I was really getting from reading reviews was an absolute clusterfuck of confusion—the built-in soundtrack of the peanut gallery. Put three humans in a room and you’ll get four opinions.
That’s not a code to be cracked; it’s just how people-ing works.
If I had a billion-dollar budget and a team of market researchers, maybe sifting through the noise would be useful? Honestly, though, even the biggest research arms get it wrong. Often.
But more to the point, if I return to my writing goals, and I factor in my actual time, energy, and other resources, I can’t figure it all out, nor do I need to. I can’t optimize everything, nor should I. Even if I could determine exactly what “the market” wants, is this something I feel passionate enough to write about?
Tell me what to be, pretty please.
One night, while reading a popular romance novel that I’d been so freakin’ excited about, I felt like a balloon with a slow leak, each scene letting out a little more air with a sad, farty pfffft, until by the end I was just holding a limp flap of rubber.
As usual, I headed over to the Goodreads caucus to see what The People thought. You can guess how that went—loudly clashing opinions on every aspect of the book. But that night, something shifted. For the first time, I could feel how useless it was to spend my finite time and energy this way.
My Approval-Seeking Spectrum (ASS) meter was squawking like mad, my chest was tight, and my stomach was staging a protest. This wasn’t market research. This was fear.
The fear that if I wanted to succeed, I’d have to write like this popular author. My inner parts were convinced this was The One Right Way (at least for tonight), which spiked my anxiety, because it demanded I be something other than myself.
All the while, my body was telling me: Stop. For the love of god, put the phone down.
And this time…I listened.
Instead of hoping the world could tell me what to be, I shut off my phone, closed my eyes, and focused on my breath. And when the ASS meter calmed down, I asked, What matters to me when I’m writing?
Like someone had flicked on a movie projector, I was flooded with images and sensations, woven together by a crystal clear theme: people coming together.
In my former magical membership, The Portal, I talked about finding archetypes that speak deeply to you, because they serve as conduits of incredibly potent energy that can be used in your spellcasting.
My One Ring to Rule Them All is people coming together. (We’ll call it PCT, so I don’t have to keep typing that out.)
I can read the driest, textbookiest description of a PCT situation, and it will bring tears to my eyes. I can watch a toilet paper commercial with a dash of PCT, and I’ll happy cry. And if they really slather on the PCT, it’s more like happy sobbing.
Seriously, this archetype is so readily accessible to me that I have to choose when to engage, otherwise I’ll be weeping in grocery store aisles.
“Weeping” is shorthand, somewhat, for a broader suite of emotions (though literal crying is often involved). My heart swells with warmth and compassion; my entire body is suffused with a feeling of love and generosity and “this is what it means to be human.”
But if I dig deeper, I’m gifted with helpful nuance.
While any form of PCT will stir something in me, there’s a specific flavor that really opens the archetypal channel. To understand it, we need to time travel back to my childhood, where PCT energy came with a catch.
In my family, connection was available, but only if you were willing to pay the price—deny large swathes of yourself and merge with the blob. It wasn’t togetherness so much as absorption. You could belong, but only if you sacrificed your selfhood.
It took me decades to realize how very, very lonely I was surrounded by family members. “Connection” meant disappearing. It meant divorcing from my inner world, because that world contained messy shit that might disrupt the blob. There was no space for meaningful difference.
Which is why, for me, the most potent charge of PCT isn’t just about unity. It’s about unity through difference—each person bringing their own shape, their own strangeness, and the collective being stronger because of it.
When I obey my childhood programming—difference is dangerous—I feel chronically unsafe, cynical, raging at the world. (To see this fear writ large, turn on the news.) But when I look for ways to honor difference while working together, life is transformed. Sometimes only for a minute or two, but that’s often enough—miracles aren’t bound by ordinary laws of time and space.
When I live from this place, the world thrums with connection. When I cast spells from this place, they work. And when I write from this place, the words feel alive.
This is what matters to me when I’m writing.
Instead of fearfully copying other authors’ career plans in hopes of “getting it right,” I want to be a channel for the archetypal energy of People Coming Together.
Knowing this ushers in a boatload of clarity.
For instance, I’m about to start the fourth draft of The Magician and the Labyrinth of Yesterdays, my next romance, and found family is a major throughline (of the entire series, really).
Knowing that I want to channel PCT helps me choose my fourth-draft focus, and it also highlights areas where I want to develop my skills as a writer for future books. I’m learning how to craft more emotionally resonant group dynamics by looking to psychology, anthropology and ritual behavior, theater (particularly improv), game theory, social psychology (like Tuckman’s stages of group development), and more.
Not only is this massively fulfilling on a creative level, it makes the writing feel like a spiritual quest, an act of devotion.
Archetypes, in my worldview, are akin to divine energies, because when the finite ego is confronted by their vastness, this can elicit a feeling of the sublime or the numinous. By learning how to channel the PCT archetype, I’m devoting myself to a specific aspect of the divine that wants to be expressed through me, and that feels pretty damn magical.
In meditation with this archetype, I see a luminous web. Each point of intersection is an act of people coming together, and these intersections serve as portals, allowing People Coming Together energy to seep into the world, whether the world around us or my story world.
The more portals I open, the more the entire web hums with energy and life, infusing the “mundane” with magic.
Archetypes are renewable sources of energy and meaning. They give work (and life) a sense of purpose that goes far beyond fleeting, fickle approval. Whenever someone talks about finding their “life’s work,” you can bet archetypes are at play.
The question is, what archetypes want to be expressed through you? What themes or experiences bring you in contact with the numinous?
My archetype happens to be People Coming Together. Yours is likely different. But whatever it is, I promise it’s a better compass than the endless hunt for approval.
Approval depletes; archetypes renew. And when you align with what naturally wants to flow through you, your work—and your life—will carry a power that no market trend can approximate.
Here’s to your luminous thread in the cosmic web, glimmering with a magic only you can bring into the world.
