I give a tarot card to each of my characters when I first create them. That helps me keep their personalities separate. Now I found a different, and far more obvious, use for them: making decisions.

I have a tarot app on my tablet that gives me a card everyday. (I use it to refresh my memory of the card meanings.) Normally I don’t have time to look at it in the morning and just skip out of the alert, but today I had a few minutes after I got to work so I checked it. And it gave me the answer to the question that had been running through my head about my world building since I woke up and all during a long drive. Awesome!

I'm trying to sort out the transportation for the main country in my fantasy series. I’d decided against animals because it felt unnecessary. The technology and magic (one and the same, really) exist to make almost anything possible, but I couldn’t pick one option. I have wagons as my main characters’ homes and decided these hover, yet couldn’t decide if that was from metalworking magic with magnets on the road or woodworking magic that treats flat land like water and floats slightly. But how to propel? Pedal? Fans? Or do I use textile magic for sails that work regardless of winds? It’s an island nation with rivers- could I take advantage of that? Or even use the sails on land vehicles like the wagons? The problem was that I liked all of these ideas (and a few others) and picking one particular type was too hard! And what about public transportation, carts, and other things? What powers those?

All this ran through my head as I got stuck in traffic this morning. Then I saw this card. My answer is quite clearly: use all of them. Have the artist/inventor mages work together to create options! And if any are silly, that’s probably better since I’m writing a lot of humor in this series.

Long story short, I need to start using tarot cards when I get stuck! Sometimes the answer is right in front of me and I just need to be pointed to it. I mean, I own four or five tarot decks. I may as well use them! I would definitely recommend this method if you're stuck. Just pull out one card from the deck (or use an app like Tarot Illuminati that gives you a daily card complete with meaning and story based on the card) and see if there's any meaning in the card that gives you an answer. The Three of Pentacles basically means "teamwork",  "crafts", "skill or talent leading to great results", and "productivity", which was just about the most obvious answer I could have asked for. You don't need to be knowledgeable about tarot- google gives great results when you type in the name of the card. It's sort of like doing a reading, but super simplified. :)

I'd previously used tarot to keep track of my characters' personalities (by assigning each of them a card), so I'm learning that tarot can be really useful for writing, particularly when I'm terrible at making decisions!

~Meri