Waking Up: the Maiden's Arc workbook

life reflecting art and all that

Hello, friends, and welcome, new subscribers! My AuDHD brain is a bit scattered and prone to change things, but here in The Purple Vale you can count on reflections on folklore, fairy tales, and the seasons from my little corner of East Tennessee.

---

Give me a story with a dark night of the soul. Give me a story where the character isn’t glamorous or glorious, but who has dried blood under her nails and rips in her skirt where the forest has dug its claws into her. Tear tracks on her cheeks and rage in her soul. She doesn’t know everything. She doesn’t know anything. Her world has been pulled out from under her, and in the resounding silence that follows, she sees her reflection for the first time.

In it, she sees only herself as she has never seen herself before.

In it, she sees the shadows of all who have gone before her, whose trails she walks and leaves breadcrumbs for the way out (not the way back). The forest may have swallowed her whole, but she found the pieces and put them back together.

mushrooms, because we only see a tiny bit of them and most of the growth happens underground! There’s a Maiden’s Arc parallel for you.

It seems more and more people are investigating the Maiden’s Arc, and I love that. We’re all a little tired of the lonely, heroic chosen one who saves the world, or maybe we just want something different. We want something that recognizes our intuition and other quiet things that have been overlooked and scoffed at for generations.

I’m far from the only person you’ve met who’s delved recently into this story form. You probably have been exploring it for years, whether you know it or not (but you probably do know it).

This post makes transitioning to the actual workbook I’ve created a little awkward. I mean, It’s an 18-page PDF. $7. Alone, it won’t work miracles. But that’s where you come in.

Purchase here

If you want to play around with writing a story based on the Maiden’s Arc, this is the perfect resource for you. If you want to see whether your current story could mirror parts of the Maiden’s Arc–or follow all the plot points–this is the perfect resource for you (it’s not an all or nothing thing, after all). If you want to practice identifying elements to this story form using familiar examples from movies, books, and fairy tales, this is still the perfect example for you.

Rather than a deep dive, Waking Up offers an overview, points you in the direction of more great resources, and offers customizable tools to help you explore this story form in your creative writing journey–and personal journey, too, only if you wish.

Though the PDF is full color, it works very well printed on a B&W printer, too.

I hope you find this resource helpful and fun to use. I’d love to know your thoughts on it, if you decide to purchase a copy for yourself.

See you over the orchard wall, friends.*

*One of my wonderful early readers for my book started signing her emails like this. I like it.