Welcome to my Astro Advice Column! If you subscribe to my Astro-Kats or Star Kids Club groups you are able to ask me questions about astrology for this advice column.


Hi! I was wondering if you have any writing advice, or creative advice in general, for someone with Mercury in Pisces. I have been afraid to write for years, both academically and creatively/on my own time, and it’s been killing me. I think my perfectionism and general dissatisfaction with the quality and clarity of my expression has been stalling me. I suspect that Mercury being in Pisces in my chart has an influence. Thank you!

—a drowning pisces


Hello drowning pisces! What a question to receive. Like you, I also have Mercury in Pisces so I may be able to speak a bit from personal experience here.

First of all, some of what you will read about Mercury in Pisces here in astrology land tends to be discouraging. On a technical level, Mercury is in fall when it is in the sign of Pisces. A planet in fall is one that is said to suffer from depression or from conditions of humiliation. Mercury in Pisces is seen as a weak planet.

But you know what? I used to work at a literary organization, a pretty big and well known one. And guess what? I asked my coworkers, who were writers and editors and journalists, what their Mercury placements were and almost every single person who worked at the literary org had Mercury in Pisces.

This is the deal about a planet that is in the sign of its own fall: this is a planet that has suffered some kind of loss. Maybe you grew up without anyone to talk to so you had to read a bunch of books and talk to yourself. Maybe you grew up losing your language and you can’t talk to the rest of your family. Maybe you were told that you aren’t intelligent just because you didn’t conform to your educational environment and your school’s budget.

But you know what? I really do believe that there’s things that a planet in fall can do that a dignified planet cannot.

Dignified planets can be very rigid. Trust me on this—I have a couple and domicile planets like to be in control while exalted ones can have a very fixed perfectionism. Debilitated planets, on the other hand, know how to ask for help. The literary org I worked out had a mission about amplifying the voices of marginalized storytellers. That’s a community effort. I think you can see why so many Mercury in Pisces people might be so drawn to this line of work.

There’s something about losing your voice that forces you to produce your own language. And that’s creative writing, right?

There’s a lot of struggles that dignified Mercury people have to go through before they start to write authentically just like us with debilitated Mercuries. Debilitated Mercuries grow up thinking that we are intellectually failing or that no one will understand us. A lot of dignified Mercuries actually grew up as gifted kids and they have their own struggles around being seen intellectually.

You’re a lot better at writing and communicating and organizing than you think you are. Part of the affliction of having a Mercury in fall comes from not believing in your own mind.

My advice to you as a fellow Mercury in Pisces writer? Embrace the confusion. You’re not writing to declare things that are on your mind but writing to learn. You also don’t believe in the self importance of preserving one’s own intelligence as a brand and that means that, unlike what our individualist culture tells us, your voice isn’t just your own.

Don’t give up. You didn’t give up talking or writing or working the first time someone talked over you or shut you down. You’re not going to give up now. Writing is a craft that has more in common with music or sports than drawing. People who draw can stop drawing for months and pick it up with their skill level unchanged. People who do sports or music or write will find that their skill level falls when we skip practice.

If you want to improve at basketball or at playing the guitar, then practice. Writing is the same. Save all of your existential worries for whether it’s worth it to write after you’ve put your practice in for the day. Write if you don’t think anyone is interested, if you don’t feel confident in English, and if you are unsatisfied with the quality of what you have written. That’s why you’re here.