Creative Arcana 002. Sophie Thomas
A Tarot-led interview with romance writer Sophie Thomas
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Creative Arcana is a regular series on The Shuffle featuring interviews with writers, artists, and makers about their creative lives, projects, and processes. The line of questioning will be informed by a series of tarot card pulls. Want to submit yourself, or a creative you know, to be featured in an upcoming Creative Arcana segment? Please fill out this form.
Sophie Thomas is a romance writer based in London, currently querying a slow-burn, friends-to-lovers novel set in the South of France. I for one, can’t wait to read it and perhaps have a little day trip from my home in Avignon to visit the locales of her book.
She’s also the author of a Substack, The Giraffe Files, where she shares candid, wise, and deeply relatable missives on life as a writer. I was struck by a recent piece she shared, which opened with the unpacking of a gutwrenching rejection before blossoming into a really beautiful meditation on what keeps her writing:
The ‘why’ for my writing has never actually really been about anyone else. Don’t get me wrong I want other people to read this novel I am working on as well as the others that I have in the works, but I don’t write for anyone else at my core. I write for myself. I have fun making my silly little characters do silly little things like fall in love. Or fight and talk. I love the quiet moments I get to write and the loud ones. I love having to keep track of limbs. I love the freedom that comes with writing a first draft because it doesn’t have to be good or perfect it, just needs to be done. I love when the words really flow. I learn to appreciate the days when the words don’t, because then it means I need to step back and rest a little bit.
I first connected with Sophie earlier this year, when she attended a journaling workshop I ran while promoting my book, The Tarot Spreads Yearbook, but it was author Erin Morgenstern who first properly drew Sophie into the world of tarot. Morgenstern’s Phantomwise Tarot is a gorgeous deck, in part inspired by her novel, The Night Circus, one of Sophie’s long-held favourite books. She’s been experimenting with the cards since she got her hands on Morgenstern’s deck last year.
Sophie told me: “I’ve always loved the idea of tarot — how it can be used as a guide throughout life. I think of the cards as subjective — you can interpret them however you’re called to in the moment of the draw. I have always felt like tarot is kind of similar to literature in that sense.”
I agree: the tarot is a rich text, to be interpreted, read, reread, and reinterpreted as we move through our lives, and it was such a pleasure to discuss the cards I pulled for her through that shared lens.
It’s a rare and brave writer that will allow someone to publically air their tarot reflections, especially when they’re not accustomed to having their cards read, so Sophie has my deepest gratitude and respect for being game to play Creative Arcana with me. We’re all lucky that she had the guts to give this a try, because her observations on the connections between the cards I pulled for her and her creative life are equal parts charming and astute.
I hope enjoy reading her responses as much as I did…
The Knight of Swords. This card is all about committing to something and chasing it down, fast: striking while the iron is hot. Does that resonate with your writing process, or do you prefer to take your time and think through ideas before putting pen to paper?
In other words: do you consider yourself a Pantser or a Plotter?
A strange combo of both. I now don’t start writing an idea until I have enough key plot points that I can kind of roughly figure out the arc of the whole story. I typically need to know my beginning and my ending, and then at least some of the scenes in the middle that I can work with — and towards — when the messing around and seeing what happens gets to be too much. There is a lot that I don’t know when I start a first draft, but there is also a lot I need to know before I begin, otherwise, I leave it alone and wait for its time to come.
The Tower. This card is all about earth-shattering moments - it can signify both disaster and enlightenment. Can you share a moment of disaster or enlightenment from your creative life?
I have always written stories. I have started to write many books. I keep finding notebooks filled with character breakdowns and story outlines. The common theme in all of them was that I really believed that a story only had worth if it was full of trauma and sadness. I started writing a lot of books and they always fizzled out because I can write good beginnings and I can write an end but I could never write the middle. I never let an idea ruminate long enough to get the ideas for the middle and also… I was trying to write against what my soul was calling for, I just didn’t know that at the time.
And because I couldn’t finish writing a book, I stopped trying.
Then, I read The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang. Reading it unlocked the romance genre from me, and helped me accept the kind of writer that I actually am. One who writes love stories where yes, there may be some emotional turmoil, but it’s mostly just love — and the ending is always happy. When that happened, I managed to write the boggy middle and tie the beginning and end together.
Page of Cups. This is a card that celebrates curiosity, playfulness, carefreeness. What part of your creative process makes you feel most curious, playful, and carefree?
I love the moment when an idea first hits. It always comes to me with an aggressive amount of clarity.
Take the Christmas romance I’m currently drafting: I heard a song lyric, then I immediately envisioned an airport, a woman going home for Christmas and bumping into the man she first loved (unrequitedly).
From there, I really do just get to play around. I get to add pieces or take them away. I try and see if I know exactly how I want them to end. Do I want them to have to really work for it (a.k.a a third act breakup)? Or is the burn so slow it takes them until the third act to even officially get together?
I play around with what-ifs and learn about my characters that way. In the initial stages, everything is at its most malleable, so I can really make it whatever I want it to be. Then when it comes to editing, I can carve and make it closer to the image that I have of it in my head, which is its own kind of fun.
Two of Swords. One of the major pieces of advice this card offers is that it’s important to open ourselves up to our instincts and intuition. What does the instinct for a new novel idea feel like for you?
A new novel idea feels like an ‘oh-no’ moment in the best possible way.
It’s hearing a lyric and then having a whole scene drop into your head, and that scene is not going away until you actually write it down.
Once it’s down somewhere, I leave it. I almost actively ignore it, but then other bits drop in: a scene on a bookshelf, ice skating and hot chocolate with whipped cream on top lips, small gestures that are actually really big gestures, but only when placed in a certain context. It’s a slow-building compulsion to get these idiots to fall in love. Or deny that they are in love. Or skirt around being in love. It’s filling a pot up to the brim with all the right ingredients and then having no choice but to bring up the heat, all before you can check to see if you’ve got everything right.
That metaphor is about to fall apart because sometimes it’s knowing that you are writing something that you are going to cut out or edit down, but in the writing of it, you’ll figure something out about the characters that in its own way deepens and shapes the story even more. And then sometimes that thing you cut out ends up making its way back into the ‘final draft’ because the initial instinct to have it in the messy first draft was right — you just needed a better understanding of the story as a whole in order to fully make sense.
The Six of Wands. Can you share a moment of victory you’ve experienced in your creative life?
I will be honest: I am terrible at celebrating victories. Heck, I am also awful at acknowledging that they have even happened most of the time. Which is my way of saying that this question almost caught me off guard because I couldn’t think of one. And that is ridiculous because there must be something, and there is: I finished writing a book this year.
Yes, I might still be the only person who has read it from start to finish, but I put in the time and effort to get it through several drafts and be in a place where I can say that I would be happy for this to go out into the world (once someone else has suggested some edits). I’ve never been able to say that before. I barely say it now, but it happened, and that is a victory.
Many thanks to Sophie Thomas for trusting me and the tarot with her stories.
If you enjoyed this interview, do yourself the pleasure of subscribing to Sophie’s Substack, The Giraffe Files.
You can also follow Sophie on Instagram here.
Join the conversation in the comments:
What did this interview bring up for you? I’d love to know:
What are your own answers to the card-prompted questions I asked Sophie?
What book/piece of art helped you see yourself more clearly as a writer/artist, in the same way The Kiss Quotient did for Sophie?
Anything else you’d like to share
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Thanks for reading x
Such a fun way to prompt an interview! Also, I somehow missed the phantomwise tarot - looks amazing! ❤️
I really enjoyed this. Thank you.
And this part is so true:
‘And then sometimes that thing you cut out ends up making its way back into the ‘final draft’ because the initial instinct to have it in the messy first draft was right — you just needed a better understanding of the story as a whole in order to fully make sense.’