As a child I was always making up stories – many of them, according to my parents – were quite gruesome tales of princesses getting stuck in towers and dark dungeons.

When Saturn, that stern teacher who forces us to grow up, crossed my Pluto and then joined my natal Saturn for my Saturn return I decided to become serious about a dream I had carried with me since childhood.

I wanted to write fiction.

Both my natal Saturn and Pluto are in the 9th house of publishing and higher learning – in the investigative and intense sign of Scorpio. It’s perhaps not that surprising that I was drawn to crime fiction.

In the decade that has passed since my Saturn return I have written four different fiction manuscripts. The first three weren’t polished or mature enough to go anywhere, but they taught me a lot about writing and what I wanted to write.

Then, during the pandemic, it all seemed to click. A character and a setting came to me and it felt like I had finally found my story – a world that combined old legends and ghost stories and real historical events. I was so excited.

I started getting up early in the mornings. I lit a candle in the kitchen and wrote between 6am (sometimes 5am) and my husband and son waking up. It felt like a sacred and joyful time.

Then, three years later, I was finally ready to send the book out into the world.

And it was rejected.

What can astrology tell me about the purpose of this book? I think I can see a narrative in the birth charts of the three drafts of that story.

Draft one

The chart for the first draft is beautiful. The Ascendant is in Scorpio, fitting for a detective novel. The Midheaven is in Leo, this is a book that wants to shine. It has five planets in the fifth house of joy and creative projects.

This was a labour of love. Those early moments in the kitchen felt like a sacred time, the writing flowed through me, almost like it was coming from a different place and not from within me.

But Mars and Saturn are almost exactly conjunct the IC of home. Part of the story of this manuscript is that it was a project that kept me sane during the lockdowns. There was constriction in the home. Here was a joyful escape.

Draft two

The second draft didn’t go anywhere. I got half-way through it and then realised I had to rewrite the book completely. The chart for this draft has a challenging T-square between Mars in Gemini in the 11th house of the collective, Moon in Sagittarius in the 4th house of home and a Neptune/Sun/Mercury conjunction in Pieces in the 7th house of relationships. Pluto is squaring Venus in the 9th and there is an almost exact Chiron/Jupiter conjunction in the 8th. Saturn on the Descendant and Uranus on the Midheaven. Phew!

I was trying to make it work and I couldn’t. There were too many conflicts in the manuscript, it was too messy. Was it a book about historical events or a book about a family or was it a love story? I felt unsure of myself and of how the book might be viewed by others. I knew only radical change could save it.

Draft three

Which brings me to the third version. The one I actually sent out into the world.

Uranus is conjunct the Ascendant in Taurus. Mars and Venus are conjunct the Midheaven in Capricorn. Pluto and Mercury have teamed up in Aquarius in the 10th. Sun is also in Aquarius in the 10th. It feels ambitious. Saturn and Neptune are found in the 11th house in Pieces.

All of that suggests to me that I wrote the book I wanted to write. I had some firm opinions about how to write it and what to write about – my goal was to dig into the collective unconscious, into myths and those archetypal stories that keep resonating throughout time, to highlight historical wrongs, hoping it might make the reader aware of how the same traumas and stories are repeated throughout time. It was in some ways always a political book.

But was it a publishable book? Perhaps not. Was it good enough to be published? I might never find out. Two publishers thought not.

Ruler of the Midheaven, Saturn, is in the 11th squaring the Moon in the 8th house of endings. This Moon is almost in the same degree as my natal Sun. So perhaps that means I will ultimately decide its fate.

What astrology can tell us about our creative projects

Writing this down has been a useful exercise – and this is one way astrology can be helpful for those of us who create.

There are many different reasons for why a book is written. Sometimes writing is therapy, sometimes it’s an escape, sometimes it goes deep into places we couldn’t reach otherwise and offers healing and sometimes it’s about weaving a new story and new energy into our own lives.

Looking at these birth charts has helped me to reframe the story of this three-year-long labour of love.

And maybe the true purpose of that book wasn’t to be published.

In the first draft the protagonist (who is a bit like me) is merely an empath, in the final draft she’s a fully fledged medium. And as child I didn’t just dream of becoming a fiction writer. I also used to dress up and play “fortune teller”, with shawls and big skirts and a crystal ball.

By writing this book I wrote my way out of a cocoon. I started to dare to talk – and write – about subjects that I’d previously felt I couldn’t share with the world.