A poet friend of mine hatched a scheme for writing a book in record time. He bought a round-trip ticket for a Greyhound bus that would take him from Oakland, California to New York City and back. He vowed that over the course of those nine grueling days and 6,000 miles, as he ate stale sandwiches from vending machines in bus stations and slept sitting up surrounded by strangers, he would churn out an epic-length poem about the experience of traveling cross-country on the most populist form of transportation. The experiment worked. His book was witty, shocking, and entertaining. I urge you to give yourself a comparable assignment, Sagittarius. Invoke the magic of a strict deadline to create something beautiful that will last a long time.

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