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Saturn in Virgo: Edits and other torture.

I’m in the throes of editing the author proofs for my book, and it’s painful. Over the years, I’ve perfected a rather obsessive writing process – dashing off a draft, printing it out, marking it up; typing in the changes, printing it out, marking it up; lather, rinse, and repeat as needed, often five or six times for a simple essay. One weeps for the trees, but I can’t seem to edit on the computer – I’ve got to see it on the page, cross things out, and shoehorn in barely-legible transitional phrases. It’s messy, but it works for me; with a 1,000 word essay, I can usually get the prose so tight you could bounce a quarter off it.

This is the process I used, more or less, when writing the book. But it simply wasn’t feasible to massage all fourteen sections of the book to the extent I would a single essay. So now, as I roam the pages I find mess after hot mess. I don’t blame my scrupulous editor or careful proofreader, because these are not the sorts of messes they would have been expected to catch or clean up. They’re messes of rhythm and word choice, meter and imagery. So I’m itching to scrawl all over every clean, cute page with my brand-new purple marker; but I restrain myself, because someone else has to be able to read my notes and I can’t just scrawl them in my usual haphazard fashion. And even after I’ve written in my neatly printed comments, I can’t be sure I’ve fixed something to my satisfaction because I can’t type in the new stuff and print it out in exactly the same format. I should have broken down in the beginning and taken the thing down to Kinkos and had a “mess” copy made for myself, then transferred everything over to the proofs in a sane, legible fashion.

Ack! I’m in mildly OCD, Saturn in Virgo hell. I can only work through a couple of chapters a day because I’m so tense as I read through it, waiting to find something intrinsically stupid and not-easily-fixable. It seems to fit the symbolism of transiting Saturn conjoining my natal Pluto, though I couldn’t explain exactly why.

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In other Saturn/Pluto news, I’ve been working with a hypnotherapist for a few weeks. He’s a fabulous fellow – he’s one of those November 1 birthday Scorpios I seem to magnetize, with his Sun, appropriately enough, conjoining my natal Neptune (and his, since he was born just a few months after me). Needless to say we click, and the hypnosis has been startlingly effective in altering some long-troublesome thought and behavior patterns. But it seems to work a bit like chiropractic, in that you make an adjustment and initially everything feels great, but then the shock of realignment freaks out the rest of the system and before you know it, you’re right back where you started. I’ll stay with it, though; it certainly seems like exactly the right work to do under the influence of Saturn/Pluto.

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Finally, I don’t know what cosmic noise to attribute this to, but doesn’t it seem like there’s a hell of a lot of horrendous torture imagery in the news and in film right now? Or am I feeling especially sensitive to it because of my own Saturn/Pluto situation? I’m sitting there last night watching, I don’t know, the Chappelle Show or something, and suddenly I’m presented with this nightmarish commercial for a movie about anesthesia… the gist seemed to be that the patients in the film aren’t actually asleep, just paralyzed during a surgical procedure? I can barely write about it, it freaked me out so profoundly. How, exactly, is this entertainment? Meanwhile, congress appears to be a stone’s throw away from officially endorsing torture by confirming Bush’s latest AG nominee/horror. What is it in our collective unconscious that’s rearing up and inflicting this violent cruelty and ugliness on the world? It’s not just Mars turning retrograde in the progressed US chart, because it ain’t just happening here.

Are any of you getting hit with a Saturn/Pluto
transit? What’s happening with you?

12 comments to " Saturn in Virgo: Edits and other torture. "

  • Saturn is squaring my Mercury and Nodes, and Pluto is opposing my Jupiter. Ouch! What *isn’t* happening to me? Relationship stability and lots of opportunities to write, that’s what…

  • I think the nasty imagery is a bit like what is happening with young adults who are “cutters..” they self-mutilate–evidently they are so numb, they have to do OBSCENE THINGS to themselves in order to get to the “FEELING” function—very very sad and hard to fix, even with therapy–

    perhaps society is becoming so NUMB that a silly show like The Dick Van Dyke show doesn’t cut it–we need gore and horror and unthinkable stuff to make us “feel.” I am not talking about you and me! but?? The popularity of this crap makes me think that SOMEONE or a whole lot of SOMEONES– out there are pretty numb…

  • Yuck. I worked on a project for a company that makes an instrument that uses brainwaves rather than pulse for anesthesia, making it easier to tell if someone’s coming out of it – also lets them use less anesthesia so people have less after-effects. Spooked me, too. Spooks the docs so much they overmedicate sometimes just to avoid that possibility.

    Sorry you’re dealing with editing woes! All that hard work will pay off, though. Just keep reminding yourself! Or have the hypnotist do it. 🙂

  • Ugh, Matthew. Saturn does have a way of making time seem like life’s scarcest resource, doesn’t it – you’re a kick-ass writer, so good luck bending time to your will. My teacher used to say Jupiter/Pluto in any kind of aspect points to Big Money, though, so maybe there’s that to look forward to.

    Madeline, you reminded me of something that did cross my mind, which is that the Pluto in Scorpio generation is coming of age. Apart from the direct influence of people born during that time, I’ve often mused that the power of Pluto in a sign isn’t truly realized into tr. Pluto moves into a sextile with that sign (“Opportunity” is a sextile concept). As Pluto moves into Capricorn in the coming year, I guess we’ll finally get a good luck at what Pluto in Scorpio was all about. :: shudder ::

    leslee, it’s comforting to think of doctors being spooked about that kind of thing – I sure as hell am! As for my editing woes, I think the hypnotist has his hands full with my other issues (issues hell, I’ve got a full subscription), so I’m going to have to deal with my editing anxiety on my own. Fortunately I’m sending the manuscript back today… then it will all be out of my hands. Which, of course, is a whole other source of anxiety!

  • Dan

    April, what about the fact that the pluto in scorpio generation is also the neptune in capricorn generation. What would be the impact of pluto conjunct their neptune for that age group? Here in the UK there’s been a lot of strange violent crimes being committed by very young people being regularly featured in the news, often being filmed on their mobiles and uploaded by the perpetrators onto sites like youtube to show off to their friends – happyslapping they call it. So I wonder if that’s connected with the upcoming pluto conjunct natal neptune for this group.

  • Ack, Dan – how dreadful this “happyslapping” sounds! And of course, there was the news out of Finland the other day of a school shooting, something so far out of the realm of that culture’s experience that a gentleman I heard interviewed about it on the radio seemed have a hard time putting his thoughts into words, though he spoke perfect English.

    Steven Forrest calls the transit of Pluto to natal Neptune “The Season of Initiation,” when we’re invited to delve into occult mysteries and enter a period of deep self-examination. I suppose that might very well play a role in what we’re seeing with the Pluto in Scorpio/Neptune in Cap generation; they’re uncovering the very darkest mysteries of the human experience, holding them up to our faces, and daring us to look away.

  • Actually, it’s gotten worse than happy slapping. There’s a real youth crisis in England right now, at least according to the Beeb’s latest WHYS show.

    April, you poor doll! Let me reassure you that you’re not alone in the craziness of author proofing. It’s hard for everyone I’ve spoken with to let go and just focus on the minor stuff because it seems like there’s a never-ending list of duh-headed phrases and errors. Hopefully you can find some peace with it and just fix what’s fixable without tearing out all of your hair.

    I haven’t had the Saturn/Pluto conj. yet, but when Saturn was transiting my 8th and exactly square my natal Pluto, that was the day my closet collapsed, I slept with the Mad Hatter and then a screenwriter 20 years his senior. In that order, in one day. I’ve stopped sweating Saturn largely, especially since I realized that, as it recently crossed my Sun/Mercury, the only thing that happened was that The Frenchman moved in (Saturn comes from my 3rd and 4th). Other than the moving drama, I was in all kinds of bliss. I think signing a lease during the Mercury Rx has had a bigger impact overall.

  • Maria, I find it incredibly comforting to know my crazy author proofing is par for the course. Anyway, I got through it all and shipped it off, so it’s out of my hands now!

    Like you, I have made my peace with Saturn and am generally a fan, even when he’s shoving my face in the dirt. But Pluto is another story; I still haven’t recovered from the nonstop Pluto transits I lived with for ten years. :: shudder ::

  • Pluto is a scary motherfucker, I admit.

  • Kathy

    Pluto transits! Shudder, indeed… I jokingly refer to that period of my life as “The Good Times.” (Pluto conjuncting Moon/Venus in Sag, while squaring Saturn in Virgo, made all the more festive by Saturn transiting opposite in Gemini– such fun, not.)

  • Kathy, just naming that transit made me wince! Yikes!

  • Saturn conjuncted my natal Venus/Pluto (both 2 Vir, also Merc at 1 Vir) in September the day my mother died. Thirteen years earlier, my live-in boyfriend broke up with me when Saturn directly opposed my Venus/Pluto. Some serious shit there. I haven’t entirely unraveled the point of it all, though I have some ideas. Anyway, I’m surviving. The first pass is usually the hardest, in my experience. I think you adjust to the energy of these outer planet, back-and-forth passes after awhile.

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