Dear Wizard,

My work has been called flat and opaque. I feel disconnected from the emotional landscape of my writing. I don’t know how to open up and allow my emotions into my work.

I want to tell stories about dragons eating knights and wizards casting magic spells. I don’t know how to intertwine my emotions into this magical landscape or why it needs to be done at all. Where does this leave me? I feel at a dead end here, Wizard.

What do you recommend I do? How do I flavor my stories of adventure and magic with the more mundane landscape of sentiment? What do you suggest?

Sincerely.
Earnest Earl (ey/eir)

Dear Earl,

The Universe is full of wonders both inner and outer. What you are discussing is your interior backdrop versus the exterior landscape of the Universe. So often as Wizards we are focused on the exterior and exploring what the Universe has to offer us in terms of things outside of ourselves whilst neglecting our interior lives.

The interior is just as important as the exterior. What is frosting without cake? What is a taco without filling? What is pie without filling? Thus you must start on a new journey. You must find the pie filling of your heart.
How you ask does one find their cake and feed it to the world?

I tell you this: it is not always easy.

We as Wizards are taught that the intellect is superior and must be used at all costs. One of those costs can be removing us from our emotional selves. From the pie filling of our souls. However, we must remember that while exploring the pie crust of the Universe is important that the meat of our life takes place in our filling. In our souls.

I urge you to start someplace that you might not like: self-examination. If you keep a journal, starting journaling. Try an exercise called ‘free-writing’. Set a time for ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes and just write. It will allow you to get back to your interior landscape. To the pie filling.

I suggest that you do this regularly. Some might prefer daily. Others less frequently. However, keeping up a regular or semi-regular regime will allow you to stay in touch with the cake of your heart. And this will allow you to be in touch with who you are as a person who travels the Universe to explore the frosting in a personally meaningful way.

Once you have your journaling practice established, I then recommend bringing what you have found in the taco meat of your heart to your studies. This will inform how you approach the tortilla crust of the Universe. What do you fill your heart with? Are you black beans and rice? Or chicken? Or carnitas? That will tell you whether you see the Universe as a corn tortilla, a flour tortilla or maybe a tostada.

It is all in how you bring the interior and exterior together. The path of the Wizard is in the blending of the interior and exterior. The exterior may seem like window dressing, but it is informed by the way we experience our interior. The Universe is not a single experience, but a manifold existence amongst a star dappled backdrop.

You can bring your emotional landscape to your study of the exterior Universe and enrich the experience of your studies for yourself and others. I believe you can do it. Do you believe you can do it, not that is the question.

Go forth, Earl, my friend and find the cake of your soul and marry it to the frosting of the Universe and you will see what a delicious journey life can be.

Sincerely,
A Wizard