First Episode of Talk and Tarot with Lily O. Laverick
Watch the full unedited video here: At a Crossroads (≈20mins)
So I did something completely random and honestly a little bit chaotic, which feels very on brand for me lately — I pulled a tarot card and just started talking, and somehow it turned into this whole ramble about life, writing, crossroads, and probably me mildly spiralling but in a productive way.
The card I pulled was the Two of Pentacles, which is actually funny because I feel like it’s been following me around lately. It keeps popping up in readings I watch and then of course it turns up for me as well. On the card, the little quote for it says, find balance in your life to build your success, and honestly… that hit a little too close to home.
The whole feeling of the card for me is balance, duality, juggling all the bits of life that never seem to sit still. Home life, work life, writing life, mental life, all of it. Some days I want everything to blend together and feel soft and natural, and other days I want to shut the world out and focus on one thing only. It really does feel like constantly trying to keep multiple things in the air without dropping one.
And I think that’s why it immediately made me think of crossroads.
Not just two paths either. Sometimes it feels like there are ten different roads in front of you and everyone keeps telling you which one is the “right” one, but you’re just stood there thinking, I genuinely have no idea where any of these lead.
That’s very much where I feel I am right now.
I’ve just finished the first draft of what is currently more of a novella than a full novel, though who even knows what it’ll become yet, and instead of immediately throwing myself into revisions I had to admit to myself that I was heading dangerously close to burnout.
Not full burnout, but that pre-burnout feeling where everything suddenly feels heavy.
I still loved the project. I wasn’t dreading it. But every time I sat down to work, it just felt like I was dragging myself through mud.
So I did the sensible thing and stepped away.
Except… my brain, being my brain, immediately decided that what I needed was to throw myself into an even bigger project. Terrible idea. Absolute no-no.
I started trying to force all these little ideas and snippets and characters together into one giant story world and I could practically feel myself wanting to pull my hair out. It was like I’d stepped away from one overwhelming thing only to create another.
So I stopped. Properly this time. And honestly, taking that step back has been one of the best things I’ve done.
I ended up on one of those random prompt generator sites — I think it was for fanfiction tropes and tags — and I clicked randomise and the first thing that came up was huddling for warmth. That was it. That was the prompt. And instead of trying to make it bigger or cleverer or more “important”, I just wrote.
I wrote these two completely new characters in the middle of a snowstorm, up on a mountain, with absolutely no planning whatsoever. No outline. No big dramatic plot map. Just vibes. And it was so refreshing.
I think in total I wrote for about two hours across the day, little pockets of time here and there, and ended up with over a thousand words.
One of the characters turned out to be pregnant, they were fox shifters, they were being hunted, and yet the whole point of the piece was simply that they needed shelter and warmth.
That was the story. That was enough. And I think that’s what really hit me. Sometimes as writers we put so much pressure on ourselves to make everything huge. Everything has to be a novel. Everything has to be a grand fantasy. Everything has to have a dramatic beginning, middle, and end. But maybe it doesn’t. Maybe sometimes it really is enough for something to just be a moment.
A snapshot. A breath. Two people huddling together in the snow. That’s it. It doesn’t always need to become a bigger thing. And I think that ties back into this crossroads feeling I keep having.
There’s always the “safe” path, isn’t there? The one you know. The one you’ve walked before. The one everyone expects you to take. For me, that safe path has often looked like, you’re an author, therefore you should be writing novels. But why? Who says? There are authors who write short story collections. Flash fiction. Novellas. Serialized stories.
Just because I mostly read novels doesn’t mean that’s the only thing I’m allowed to write.
I keep coming back to this image in my head of standing at a crossroads somewhere in the French countryside, hedges on either side, one road wide and familiar and easy to see, and another almost hidden by trees.
The familiar one feels safe. The hidden one feels uncertain. But I think lately I’m craving the uncertain one. I’m tired of always taking the route that feels expected. Maybe I want a bit more mystery. A bit more adventure. A bit more “I have no clue where this is going but let’s see”. And honestly, maybe that’s what the Two of Pentacles is really saying to me.
Choosing one thing doesn’t mean abandoning the other forever. You can put one pentacle down and come back to it later. You can try one path and if it’s not right, turn around. Or better yet, make your own. I had this thought while talking earlier that it’s a bit like walking through a wheat field. At first there’s no path. Nothing. But if you keep walking back and forth, eventually the wheat bends and suddenly there’s a trail where there wasn’t one before. Sometimes we need to do that in life. Stop waiting for someone else to point out the road. Stop waiting for signs.
Just walk.
And if you have to keep coming back and trying again, that’s fine too. Someone else might take that same path and call it a mistake. You might take it and find exactly what you needed.
That’s the thing about advice and life direction and creativity — other people’s experiences are useful, but they are not yours. You need your own mistakes. But equally, you need your own successes.
And maybe that’s where the reversed meaning of the card comes in as well because the reverse is all chaos, imbalance, overwhelm, disorganisation… which honestly feels a bit like this entire ramble. Very fitting.
This whole post is probably the human embodiment of chaotic Two of Pentacles energy. But maybe there’s balance in the chaos too. Maybe sometimes being messy and uncertain and rambling your way through your own thoughts is exactly how you find clarity.
This really does feel a bit like pantsing but in life form. No structure. No thesis. No neat ending. Just me thinking out loud and seeing where it leads.
So if you’ve read this far, thank you for following my wandering brain down all these little side roads.
Maybe you’re at your own crossroads right now. Maybe you needed the reminder that you’re allowed to try something different. You’re allowed to choose the hidden path. You’re allowed to write the short story instead of the novel. You’re allowed to make your own road entirely.
And if it turns out not to be for you, you can always turn back and try again.
Anyway, thank you for reading my very chaotic thoughts. I actually really loved just pulling a random card and chatting like this, so I might keep doing it.
Would genuinely love to know what you got from this little ramble, if anything at all 💜
Watch the full unedited video here: At a Crossroads (≈20mins) and maybe subscribe to the channel Xxx