Subject: Woo-Woo and Fiction Writing and You ❤️ 📚

Sci-Fi Fantasy Fiction + Genre Writers, Tools and Events to Feed Your Creative Soul

🚀 Specializing in supporting science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction writers, and creative entrepreneurs 🐉



Woo-Woo and Fiction Writing and You ❤️ 📚


Jump right in!


Weekly Podcast


This week's How To Write The Future podcast episode:


🖊️ Time-sensitive! Deadline closes soon to apply to this fall's Next Step Writers hands-on critique group


🎉 Sign up now for the Sales Email Summit put on by Liz Wilcox as it starts next week:


❤️

This email may be long, so you may need to click to expand and to read the full email. Or read online.

Friday, August 15, 2025

Hi Friend,

As a creativity coach and novelist, I've discovered that the "woo-woo" aspects of life — whether astrology, tarot, or oracle cards — serve as powerful creative tools.


They offer entry points to understanding both ourselves and the characters we create.


The magic of writing isn't supernatural, but exists in how we perceive and think.


When we're stuck, these tools function like looking out a café window — they trigger new connections and insights.


Such tools function as prompts and get the creative juices flowing.


At its core, creativity thrives on curiosity, wonder, and asking "what if?"


This questioning mindset opens doorways to innovative story worlds and character development that technical skill alone cannot access.


Besides "what if?" I also like to use these story prompts if I'm stuck in the writing or editing process:

  • I wonder...

  • [character], how are you doing? What's going on?

  • What I'm stuck on is...

  • All the reasons why this story is giving me a hard time...

  • The reader emotion I'm aiming for is...

What story prompts get you unstuck?


Hit reply and let me.


And/or share in the Fellowship of the Pen Facebook group here:


https://www.facebook.com/groups/FellowshipofthePenforGenreNovelists/



❤️

On to the weekly podcast...

Human Design and Fiction Writers 

“Do you like to daydream? I love to daydream. I’ve always loved to daydream ever since I was a child and when I was a child, I wished I was magic.” – Beth Barany


In the latest How To Write the Future podcast episode, I share my Woo-Woo interests, including my backstory from pre-med to fiction, and the magic of Writing.


I'm also sharing resources I use myself to inspire the characters in my stories, including one of my very own, The World Building Workbook for Fiction Writers, which is available to download.


To listen or read this episode's transcript, go here (Writer's Fun Zone):



The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace.


Enjoy!


🤩 Sneak peek


In the next episode, Ep. 166, I chat to book coaches Emily Golden and Rachel May about story theme, world building, and conflict.


⭐️ 🎧🎙️ All previous episodes of How To Write The Future podcast listed here.


❤️


Time-sensitive! Deadline closes soon to apply to this fall's Next Step Writers critique group

  • Apply here for our hands-on, workshop-based, critique group where you can get feedback on your writing, improve your craft, and develop your stories, all with the end goal of getting published.

  • Apply by August 22, 2025. Limited to 12 writers.

Here's that link again to learn more and apply:


https://bethbarany.com/next-step-writers-group/


Perfect for you, if you are:

  • short story writers and novelists who write genre and literary fiction

  • publication focused

  • wants to learn and improve their writing

  • committed and enjoys the learning process

Questions? Just hit reply and let me know.


Apply here.


❤️

Join this Sales Email Summit put on by Liz Wilcox -- an email marketing teacher.


Liz Wilcox asked me to speak at this free event happening August 19–21, and I said yes because it’s all about showing real sales emails that worked.

No fluff. No theories.


I'll share about a well-performing sales email and the exact strategy behind it.


Over 20 speaker who will walk us through their top-performing email in to 10 minutes.


Delivered in audio-only, so you can listen on the go, this summit is quick, super actionable, and wildly insightful.


Learning how to write sales emails is relevant to fiction writers.


Here's my take:


Social media changes -- changes their algorithms or disappear altogether -- but email remains.


I've been in business for over 20 years.


And email is still the most powerful way I get the word out about my books and, of course, my services.


Email remains the best way (i.e., produces results) to connect with my readers and clients and students, hands down.


Sign up here:


https://bethbarany.com/lw2025ses


❤️

Happy Writing!



Best,

Beth


PS. 2 more classes for September and October:



Starts mid-September!

⭐️ Entrepreneurship Training for Creative Writing Professionals. Registration is now open. Only 12 spots. Starts Sept. 16 and goes to Dec. 9, 2025. Not sure? Take the quiz here: https://bethbarany.com/apprenticeship/#quiz



Starts October 1st, 2025!


♥️ Romancing the Subplot Workshop class! 4 weeks in Oct. 2025. Registration now open! Only 12 spots available.

https://bethbarany.thrivecart.com/romancingthesubplotfall2025/



 


🌟 If you find my resources helpful, please forward them to a friend who may need them too. Thanks!



Beth Barany
Creativity Coach for Writers

Teacher, Speaker, Workshop Facilitator
bethbarany.com

I not only teach and coach novelists, I am one too! 

I'm the author of 12 published novels of *Magical Tales of Romance, Mystery, and Adventure* author.bethbarany.com


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My mission is to support your adventure as a creative and step into your next best self.


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Or share my work with your friends. Thanks!

Beth Barany is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy novelist, and certified creativity coach for writers.


She specializes in helping writers experience clarity, so they can write, revise, and proudly publish their novels to the delight of their readers. 

Here be the legalese: In connection with the operation of this newsletter and business, Creativity Sparks includes affiliate links to trusted partners. Barany Consulting earns a commission from the Affiliate Links which commission is based on the number of sales that are made as a result of users of the Newsletter clicking over to the Affiliate Link and purchasing from the Affiliate Link a product and/or service. Thus endth the legalese.

live in the territory of Huichin, part of the stolen land of the Chochenyo Muwekma Ohlone, the successors of the historic and sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County, in Oakland, California, the San Francisco Bay Area. Northern Hemisphere. Earth.


The Solar System. → Carina–Sagittarius Arm in the Milky Way galaxy. Milky Way subgroup → Local Group → Local Sheet → Virgo Supercluster → Laniakea Supercluster → Local Hole → Observable universe → Universe.


*

I stand with people of Ukraine and all peoples 🎗️ in their fight for freedom from oppression and the right to self-determine. Yes, all peoples. Not just some.



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