These plans may well change based on what happens as I go through the query/book proposal process. If I land an agent – and then a publisher – I probably give up a fair chunk of control of the project (and the title will probably change.) If I am unsuccessful at landing an agent and/or publisher, we’re looking at Lulu.com, a touch of public embarrassment (hardly the first time) and, for whatever it’s worth, enough creative control that about 25 people will look at this project and 3 might buy a copy. I acknowledge I may fail. I’ve failed before, and to date, my survival rate is phenomenal.

Also to date, so those of you especially who see me Tweet-tweeting about this know, my intentions are as follows:

1)Book – in rough draft. Just got the first chapter in 2nd draft on Sunday. This means that it’s now coherent, but the prose can still improve and the manuscript is quite likely riddled with the sorts of typos and grammatical errors that bypass Word. I realize I’m in rookie zone since I have the entire book give or take a few sections already written. Even if it doesn’t get picked up as is, the additional chapters are still usable.

2)Survey – I have doubts that any survey is fully scientific or reliable, and Gods only know if I’ll get enough data to define anything relevant. Even so, through this survey I am inviting the neopagan/Wiccan community (and Reconstructionists if they can tolerate the neopagan header as a kindness to me) to add their own voices and perspectives to this project. While mine will be loudest – I am the self appointed narrator – I want to offer a)numbers I don’t know that we’ve gathered recently or ever on divorce among these particular Western-world faiths and b) to offer anecdotes and experiences that drastically differ from mine. Advice that lingers with me from an old screenwriting professor applies here: “Don’t even try to relate.” By speaking from personal experience without care for whether or not others “get it” I’ve found that people who might not connect at all can connect and add to our collective lessons from these experiences.

3)Documentary – This is where I venture out of my comfort zone. I thought of this initially as a website promotion, but then I realized that I might do something more, if not necessarily better. I intend to interview on camera any willing participants in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area. If I’m lucky, someone may let me video their handparting ritual. While I don’t expect much from the production quality – I’m working with two Flip cameras – it’s something I can release free online that people can share freely.

That’s my current total intention for the Divorcing a Real Witch project. The survey itself is in beta right now, and anyone else who wants to beta test, please let me know. Mostly I’m looking for when/where the survey breaks so I can do what I can to make sure it stays operational.

Also, when I do post the survey, if you’re a blogger looking for something to post about, please run an announcement about the survey once or twice. I’ll be more than happy to return the favor on any of your projects.

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I’m also working on the knotty problem of incentive. I can’t reasonably expect people to do this for absolutely nothing. Just asking the questions was emotionally wrenching, and I’m not answering them myself because I write about my own experience – in detail – in the book. Somehow offering a free copy of the Spellcasting Picture Book, or of the upcoming illustrated Zombie Repellent Chronicles¹ just doesn’t seem to answer to what some people will go through while fishing their memories over this stuff.

Name/Contact/Location (for people willing to interview on camera for the coinciding online documentary I plan to piece together.)
Data points: number of marriages
Length of marriages
Children from each marriage (#)
Pets from each marriage (# and type)
1^st marriage
2^nd marriages and greater
Definitions of divorce
Legal experiences including division of property
Child custody
Pet custody
Religious issues and Ritual Practices
Family/friends/peers
Alternative lifestyles
Dating

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1. For real. I now have an illustrator.

Foreword: Why I wrote this book

Chapter 1: Why divorce when marriage is optional?

Chapter 2: The impact of divorce on family and friends

Chapter 3: Untangling the entanglement: the magical benefits of handparting

Chapter 4: Spells and magic to assist handparting rituals

Chapter 5: A year and a day, the end

Chapter 6: Oathbreakers and Warlocks

Chapter 7: Divorced witches under 30

Chapter 8: What to expect when you’re divorcing (and a witch)

Chapter 9: Rebounds, retrogrades and Saturn returns

Chapter 10: Life after handparting

Chapter 11: Between divorce and dating

Chapter 12: I’m single and Wiccan. Now what do I do with me?

Appendix – this will list resources helpful to divorcing pagans. Right now it’s just a book list including the works of Julia Cameron and Z. Budapest’s Summoning the Fates.

Looking at it here, it needs some re-ordering in the middle, but I can work with it.

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As of Thursday: The first draft on handparting and Wicca is done! Joy!

Now there’s a whole lot more work to do, of course, but this is the first time I have written a work that long, ever. I realize that it’s a long road ahead, but hopefully with careful care and a little help from my friends I can bring this puppy into print (or digital issue) once I get all the phases done.

As the next part of my work, I’m also going to be posting a very long survey online, and asking people who are Pagan and divorced in the Twin Cities area if they’re willing to sit down and do an interview with me. I would like to get as many of these interviews on camera as possible, because I plan to open a web page with a few of these videos. I may be able to string together an online documentary if the interviews are of sufficient quality.

Along with the survey I will post the outline and sample chapters (after much rewriting, I’m sure.) I am seeking an agent to represent me. I’m also wondering if I should start a Facebook fan page under my own name. While Facebook is the devil, it does have marketing clout.

I’m already feeling quite celebratory, and I had friends over last night as a sort of indirect celebration.

And now, more work ahead.

One small thing. It works.

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I’ve gone into this knowing that publishing is a completely different game than a)the pagan market perceives it to be in the first place and b)what it actually was in the first place. I am an internationally published author. When I introduce myself, I generally get a response of, “What was your name again?” I think that sums up international publication for most of us, and I don’t expect that to change because I actually write a book as opposed to my smattering of short articles.¹ Fortunately, I’ve gotten bits of help and nudges along the way – Lisa of Cybercoven.org² has definitely sent some good information my way, as have local members of my writer’s group who also know the metaphysical publishing field.³ Yesterday, after finding the post through a comment over on Lupa of Therioshamanism’s livejournal, I discovered RuneSoup. The post was the Five Laws of Occult Economics: Why We Suck at Money. There’s more digging to do, on this, of course, and I am a true Scorpio in that I’d like to pluck at the underlying attitudes while people get mad at me for making their internal buildings collapse, but for the on-the-table reasons that you can’t ignore, this pretty well covers it.

I read through the blog post, found it valuable, commented as such and marked it in my “Read It Later” plugin. Apparently Howard likes to get to know his readers, because he contacted me today to tell me he wrote about my project on the Divorce and Wicca (or whatever title gets picked for it) here – I’m example 5.1. I think his plan is intriguing, and while I have every intention of hiring a publicist and actually have a specific publicist in mind, I can’t see how that person would object to me doing a chunk of the legwork myself.

While this book isn’t nearly as fun as the Urban Wicca book I have on backburner, I suspect it will be received more easily since it is unlikely to challenge any (Wiccan) assumptions. I suppose writing this is after all the literary equivalent of eating my vegetables first. At least it’s not brussel sprouts.

I am grateful for the help and tips I’m receiving along the way. Article writing, once you get into a groove, is relatively easy. But writing a book is daunting, because there actually aren’t many places that spell it out all at once: a marketing plan should look like this, a book length should look like this, a query letter for an agent should look like ___, for a publisher like ____ and you can do this and this with proposals, etc.

I’m not a babe in the woods in this, but I am a toddler. I appreciate all the points I get that encourage me to er, toddle along.

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1. Also, finding some of my work floating around the Philippines made me really wish I had a proper agent.
2. read her book Magical Connections, it’s good!
3. Not sure how public second friend wants to be, thus not linking at this point.

“Forgiveness itself is a complicated issue that’s treated badly in western culture. Because of Christian thinking, there are people who believe they’re entitled to forgiveness from everyone. They’re not. Forgiveness, like respect, is an earned and mutual process, and far too many people push for you to forgive others because they do not want to deal with the very real consequences of someone else’s pain.”

I really have encountered a lot of people who think that they’re just owed forgiveness for the harm they do. And others that push me to forgive wrongs done to me despite no efforts made to right or even apologize for/take responsibility for the cruel action.  I don’t practice a religion founded on some guy forgiving all my sins, and when I did practice that religion, I was not so convinced of my moral rightness that I eschewed responsibility for my actions.

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I’m going to expand on this at some point¹, particularly in light of Starhawk’s statement last year that pagans need to reach out to younger women via their own platforms (Facebook, Myspace, etc.) While this overlooks young men, I agree with the general spirit of the sentiment.

I’m seeing some success in that direction in the Twin Cities community, and I’m delighted to say I was wrong about how effective they would be.  The reaching-out is working because those managing it are managing it exactly correctly. The trouble, frequently, has been one of relevance. There’s a lot of “pagany” stuff that I don’t like or don’t want, and I’m not alone – but I’m also one of the few unafraid to say it out loud. Hell is likely to freeze over before I’d go on a “pagan campout.” I don’t do festivals. I like the great outdoors, and I am grateful that nature allowed humanity to evolve the sense to move into caves.

However, I’m impressed to see a job/business networking program and some integration with “geek culture”² without confusing religion and fandom.

What really needs to happen first though is that the elders who want to reach out to the youngers must stop and really examine their attitudes and assumptions. Maybe do that exercise where you deliberately call up stereotypes about different groups and where those stereotypes come from. The youth will benefit from doing the same exercise. Before the groups can connect you have to look at these attitudes, as they really are dividing us all right now.

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1. readers may have to remind me
2. although I can’t say I’ve cared for the way it’s been done in the past

So – some feedback from my writer’s group made it clear I need to make the handparting book more clear in both background and intentions. Starting with the inevitable “what is Wicca?” speech that’s been obligatory since the first mass-consumption book about Wicca was written.

Here’s a small sampling of the foreword I’m writing:

“Most people inclined to pick up this book are Wiccan, or are neopagan, or know enough about ritual religions to want to borrow a well known ritual to fit in to his or her own spiritual needs. But just in case you’re merely curious as to what on earth handparting, Wicca, or handfasting is, the following points will clear a few things up.

First, Wicca is a religion with as many traditions as Christianity has denominations. Within Wicca, there is just as much quibbling about whose tradition bears the torch of legitimacy, much the same as Christians who argue about which Bible gets used post which reformation. Wicca is currently a fringe religion – the fringe status is rapidly changing to “simple minority” – that is part of what might be called the neopagan religious subculture. Wicca is one of many religions that anchors its spirit on concepts outside monotheism.

Wicca has no core mythology of its own, but contains a loose set of beliefs surrounding a usually benign mother goddess figure, the name and character of which can come from nearly any world mythology. In some traditions the mother Goddess has a husband or consort, sometimes he’s just not in the picture. Along with honoring the seasons and moon phases by adopting from the Celtic calendar, Wicca runs on a moral guideline that believes moral absolutism can cause destruction, and that different situations call for different decisions.”

Remember, there are entire books dedicated to the spokes beneath the neopagan umbrella. Mostly I’m writing about Wicca and divorce here.

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With that perspective, this is what poured out of me this afternoon.

I want to write this as a letter to an Internet acquaintance. She is going through a divorce now after she married her off-and-on bohemian wannabe rock star lover, and is now grieving as the divorced and hopeful grieve. I hope that she is taken seriously. I hope that she is taken more seriously than I was when I left my husband after three-and-a-half years.

She is not surrounded as I was by Indian women operating on the very false assumption that because divorce happens often to American women that marriage is casual and happens easily. She does not have to deal with them imitating the characters on Sex and the City, not realizing that what they were watching had nothing to do with the western experience. She was not advised “you dumped him! Forget him!” so insensitively as though he had been just a boyfriend, perhaps with more paperwork, but someone to be dismissed and forgotten as, in their minds, all Americans are to be dismissed and forgotten. At least, I hope that’s not what is happening and has happened to her.

At least on this side of the cultural divide, people try to hide the stigma they project on to you, frequently resorting to just not talking about it. You might even think you’re fully supported until you find out that the couple you used to have a weekly drink with have had three dinner parties without you. Easier to avoid you, let you drift, than to go so far as to proffer insightful opinions on a dead relationship, where clearly, some insight had been missing from within and certainly can’t be applied from without.

Divorce, even when you leave him like I did, even when you fall in love with someone else, even when he hits you on purpose or “accidentally,” even when he tells you artists are all useless and should be dead and then tells you that you aren’t really an artist… divorce still hurts, and is the choice that you do everything you can to avoid. Divorce is as bad as death. It’s worse than death, and not just because the body is still walking around. It’s choosing euthanasia before the puppy bites another neighbor and draws blood.

At least, with death, you are expected to grieve. But with divorce, unless you are talking to other divorcees, and sometimes not even then, your grief is not respected. You are to move on as soon as possible, put it behind you, pretend it didn’t happen. You aren’t supposed to talk about the friends you’ve lost, that you’ve had to lose, about the family members that are no longer family. You aren’t supposed to talk about the best friend that turns on you, seeing you as some harlot for going through a divorce without separating from your former spouse like you should, despite your support of her when she carried on an affair with a married man and was very nearly the cause of a divorce herself. You aren’t supposed to mention your feeling of sheer frustration at having to leave after spending so much time trying to make peace with your partner’s unwelcoming family.

Suddenly you become the “single” friend, especially if you are childless. You are expected to listen to the long and dolorous exploits of friends with family and children, and they are secretly expecting you to wish for what they have, silently demanding your jealousy whether you have any or not. If you admit that you are bored by their monologues or angered by their indifference towards your life then you are cast as “bitter.” I don’t know if this is the way it happens with the people that are married for twenty years and then finish up when the children are raised and the choice is divorce or homicide. I just know what happens when you are young, how a divorce gets you cast as being young and frivolous whether or not there has been anything about you or your personality that has been inclined towards the shallow or impulsive. People will act as if you’ve grabbed a diamond and then thrown it down a toilet like a frustrated brat with a broken vending machine toy.

With no formal process for managing the way your reality has completely unraveled allowed, you usually end up choosing someone to imitate because the crisis makes it too hard to figure out what your emotional process is now. Either you become something wildly bohemian, embracing singleness and aggressively trying to replace what you lost and repeat until you find what you had to kill in the first place, or else you expand your rancor against the person you used to love, imitating bitterness because at least you’ve seen it before so you know how it works.

Even the bitterness is easier on the people around you, the people that don’t understand. It gives them something almost concrete, something identifiably wrong with you. It’s easier on the mind to apply stigma to someone who is angry and bitter because clearly, they deserved to fail, than to a person who is simply sad. People who are just sad that a marriage didn’t work out are the ones that are the most disturbing, because it raises the possibility that the marriage wasn’t a failure, that there really were circumstances beyond either partners’ control, that despite religious edicts and chest-pounding claims to the contrary, sometimes things just don’t work out.

Whatever the reasons, they didn’t work out, and you had to end the relationship and now you still have to let the part of it that was in you, the part of the person that is in you, die. There is no quick way to kill it after you’ve married a person. All the heinous things ex-boyfriends do that can make the heart strings snap and break until you’re completely out of patience and compassion don’t break so easily when a husband does them. The strings are thicker, the attachment deeper, and the memories much more palpable.

So there you are, without support and without ritual. Seeking out other divorcees may or may not give comfort; for me it didn’t work as it was only ever more people still imitating, acting on how they thought they were supposed to feel with fake toughness and all too few really working through the grief and loss. My divorce has made me lose all respect for the badass. To hit, to yell, to confront – they have their place, those acts can defend, but the way they usually get used is just another type of laziness, a way to avoid facing the hurting soft bits that anatomy can’t name. It’s not the bad asses who heal. They’re much too invested in their identity as tough birds to choose to let the poison bleed out. It’s the softer ones, the ones who cry more and who say they’re sad but who don’t reach out for their old loves, who don’t seek replacement or curse but who simply grieve – they are the ones who recover, have new lives, becoming something other than just divorcees.

There is no shortcut, and there is no easy way. There is no ritual or magic spell that will make it all go away. And there is never, ever any absolution of responsibility for your actions no matter what you are feeling. Forgiving yourself, having others forgive you, will still not absolve you. You are not who you were when you married, and you are not supposed to be. You are who you are now, and you are not yet who you are going to be. That’s good. No matter what may happen to you as a result of divorce, whether it’s economic loss, health or dignity, no one has the ability to take away your potential to change, and that potential is what you absolutely must have to continue living your life, married, single, divorced or just alive.

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