“Touch magic.”
– Jane Yolen

“It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done.”
– Terry Pratchett

You knew this was coming, right?

Week 4 of January is here. And after enchanting your space and your body, and consuming magic, it’s time to…

make magic.

We’re not asking you to cast a spell (though, if that’s part of your practice or something you’d like to explore, go nuts – it certainly fits the bill!)

We’re asking you, simply, to create. To make something, anything, that fans the spark inside you. The one that lights up and makes you feel a little more in tune with the world. 

If you’re feeling especially drained (and, let’s face it, who isn’t these days?), you’ll have the most success with this if you think small. So small that you might almost feel like it’s not worth it. Like it’s not that meaningful, not that important, not that magical.

But there’s a really good reason to start small.

Do you want to know a secret?

Thinking too big and expecting massive, sparkling, WORLD EXPLODING productivity and creativity from yourself is the easiest way to shoot yourself in the foot and make NOTHIN. By telling yourself that you’re going to do it all – write a book of fairy tales, repaint your bedroom purple, all the 20,000 projects you’ve been dreaming of for the last ten years, all right now – you can overload your brain into doing nothing.

But.

If you start small… if you write 1 page, or 1 paragraph of a fairy tale… if you choose your paint color… if you take one tiny step forward and make a tiny bit of magic…

More magic follows.

We promise.

Your quest: Make magic. Dream big, but choose something small to start with. Make your own special, magical thing, and watch it grow.

Then tell us all about it.

Sara and Brittany’s Response:

So our own contribution this week is a prime example of this.

We have at least five books that we want to write. They’re in various stages of completion, from mostly drafted to notes to a complete book proposal. 

And we’ve definitely let ourselves get pulled in about a million directions, which prevents us from making much progress on any of them.

So we’re making small steps on just a few projects that we’ve chosen to prioritize for now.

One of them is a book of poetry. And every week so far this year, we’ve written one poem to add to it. Just one at a time. One is really long. One is two stanzas. But we’re writing them and watching the manuscript sloooowly, magically grow.

Here’s the beginning of the longest one, about Bluebeard’s wife and her sister Anne.

“She was always
A rose, a rocket, a rarity,
Blushes and brief glances.
Dazzling, demure –
She knew how to smile,
My sister, my harbor.

I was porridge, a Wednesday,
Dependable and dull-haired.
One face among many at parties,
But an ace at stories, 
At reading people,
And whispering truths behind a fan.

The night I met him, I felt
Feral, strange, and
Beautiful,
Like the sky, 
Like the perfect dress
For the perfect night.
Blue, 
His eyes were blue,
My dress was blue, 
His beard,
Blue.”

We hope you enjoyed our Re-Enchant January challenges this month! Please feel free to e-mail, comment here, or post about your experiences in the Facebook group – we’d love to hear!

(You can read about challenge #1 here, challenge #2 here, and challenge #3 here if you’d like to catch up!)