Mercury in the last degrees of Sagittarius is a great big wake-up call where we identify a pattern we haven’t seen before. All of a sudden, we see exactly where we are going with our writing, and how to get there. The secret is in the characters, and in making a commitment to finding out what THEY want, as opposed to making them say and do what YOU want them to. This is that moment when the characters come alive and get a mind of their own. You just need to start typing and follow them wherever they lead. If you’ve done the prep work on your outline, they won’t be able to destroy your plot. They will just enhance it.

Writing flows easily very early this morning, but commitments to others arise a little later. Loud annoyances can mess with our zen around lunch time. This afternoon is good for writing about the environment, farming or food production. This evening you could be speculating about idealistic or futuristic ways of feeding people around the world. Mars semi-square Sun gives a bit of frustration around seeing the vision and being able to implement it. Fantasy and sci-fi writers can do some good world-building work today.

Today is great for writing, but not for publishing. You may think you’re ready to send that written work out into the public, but don’t. Go over it one more time. Give it one more editing cycle. You’ll find some mistakes or things you could have said better, and you’ll be glad you waited. Jupiter trine Sun will make you extremely optimistic, maybe overly so. By late this evening, you’ll be all done, and ready to send your baby out into the big wide world.

It’s a day for looking at the big picture, the overall scheme, instead of individual ideas that pop into your head. Jupiter in Leo trine Sun in Sagittarius can make for some huge, expansive, world-altering drama. But Moon quintile Saturn wants to keep everything within the bounds of a preexisting structure. It’s like an explosion contained within a bunker. If you try to change the structure too much today, you could be left with a big mess. Try to stay in bounds, but go wild within that self-imposed cage.

You know where you’re going with your writing now. Any tendency to be derailed by external interruptions will be thwarted. Your concentration will not be disrupted by anything today. You will even be able to ignore your own emotions for as long as it takes to get the job done. Take advantage of this strong one-pointed focus and tackle any difficult scenes you may have been avoiding. Or get that research or editing job done. Today, you’ll be able to easily discern what’s important and what’s not.

The spotlight today is on commitment. This can be taken in several directions. Either you can commit to your writing, say, by making a schedule and sticking to it. Or you may just be writing about a character who is dealing with commitment issues. The Moon conjuncts Jupiter in Leo giving romance writers a big boost, and Mercury quintile Neptune bursts open the doors to our creative imagination. Hold true to your vision today. You are not an aspiring writer. You are a writer. Period. Now go forth and write.

Pluto and Uranus continue their square to each other asking us to find exciting new ways to look at the structure of our writing. These aspects will last until April 2015. Coinciding with Jupiter retrograde, they scream out for us to find a way to balance freedom and restraint. Are you a pantser or a plotter? Don’t decide. Look at both sides and see the value in each. To top this all off, Venus, representing art and beauty, is straddling freedom loving Sagittarius and system defining Capricorn. The message is clear. We need to embrace both freedom and structure in our writing, to make it the best that it can be.

Tensions ease, and there is a feeling of forward movement today. Highly emotional or funny scenes can be written easily. At least you’ll get the emotional tone of the scene right. You may still need to edit it later, though, with Mercury combust. After dinner you get a surge of confidence as the Moon moves into Leo. With a quincunx to Venus, though, romantic scenes could go over the top into melodrama tonight. Concentrate on the internal feelings of the women in your writing and constrain any tendency toward the obvious or shallow. Dig deep into the basis of your female character’s attitudes and emotions to give depth to your writing tonight.