in practice: a conversation with sam manzella
opening the door to a new column!
Dear reader,
Welcome to the first installation of a new column of The Doorway, which I’m calling in practice. I’ll be sharing conversations with friends and relative strangers about their own creative practices, investigating what lights their fire and passing their kernels of wisdom along to you. I hope to interview people with a wide variety of creative practices for this column: writers, dancers, painters, chefs, retreat leaders, drummers, gardeners, teachers, glassblowers, sewers, herbalists. People who “do art” professionally and people who work in corporate offices and make collages in their free time. Creativity is a conversation—let’s dive in!
Our first featured creative is my friend Sam. We were second graders on the playground together, and then fourteen-year-olds writing novels about misunderstood girls with magic powers, and now we’re adults who meet up at wine bars to discuss the epic highs and lows of working in the writing world. There are very few people from my hometown I still keep in touch with, so you already know Sam is very cool, but here’s her official bio:
Sam Manzella is a Brooklyn-based writer, astrologer, and digital producer. An award-winning journalist, Sam was previously an associate editor at Logo News, Paramount Global’s LGBTQ+ digital magazine (RIP). Her writing and original reporting has appeared in 20+ digital and print publications. They are currently a staff writer at STAR/CHILD, the astrology app for parents, where they pen daily horoscopes and transit overviews. Sam also cowrites the astrology newsletter Venus Gays with her writing partner Sterling Bowen. You can learn more about their (extremely varied, extremely Gemini) body of work here.
If you’d like reflections on creative practice and goodies in your real, physical mailbox every month, consider becoming a paid subscriber. I currently donate 20% of proceeds to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
Talk to me about your creative practice. What does that phrase mean to you?
I write for a living and always have, which is something I simultaneously a) do not take for granted and b) have a love-hate relationship with. These days especially, my creative practice is inextricable from the notion of work (ugh) or professional success (cringe). But my writing is still creative, even if it’s labor, and I’ve managed to keep the joy mostly alive.
For me, cultivating a creative practice means ritualizing the work. That can look like different things: Some days, it’s me going for a long walk before work, lighting my favorite candle when I finally sit down at my desk, and relishing in the delight of choosing each and every word with care. Some days, it’s me waking up a little too late, forcing myself to open up a blank Google Doc (in my office that is, notably, also my bedroom), and word-vomiting onto the page when I’d rather be doing literally anything else.
It’s the practice part—the regularity of it, the way I’ve structured my entire life around creative output—that’s sacred to me. It’s both ludicrously mundane and absolutely magical. Creating something out of nothing, again and again and again, will never not feel like sorcery.
Outside of the writing you do for work, do you do anything creative regularly that’s just for fun?
Yes, but not as often as I'd like! It's an ongoing struggle for me. I don't always have the time or mental energy to be creative outside of work. That said, I totally recognize the value of having creative outlets that are purely for fun—journaling and writing Venus Gays scratch that itch for me. So does analog photography, which is something I love and want to explore more. In 2025, I’m planning to start a long-term writing project that’s completely separate from the writing I do for work (but, if I’m being real with myself, I need to get my work-life balance sorted out first).
How does your work as an astrologer influence your understanding of your creative practice?
I often describe astrology as the lens through which I view the world, and that’s true in the context of creativity too. Abstractly, it’s pretty much impossible for me to talk about my writing without at least thinking about how it’s reflected in my birth chart or the current transits. (It is, in so many ways.)
Practically speaking, becoming a full-time astrology writer earlier this year forced me to think about making creative labor sustainable. I write horoscopes and transit overviews all day, five days a week; STAR/CHILD, the app I now write for, has a super small content team. This is my favorite writing job I've ever had, hands-down, but managing my workload and not burning out has been difficult at times.
It helps that my boss is, like…normal and encourages me to take regular time off (Jessica, if you’re reading this, you’re a real one). But it also helps that I have this ancient tradition to better understand myself, the creative parameters I need, and the astrological weather we’re currently experiencing. For example: When Jupiter entered Gemini back in May, I began putting my phone on Do Not Disturb basically all day so I can write without distraction. And I know that, based on my chart, having flexibility and breathing room in my creative practice are non-negotiables. So I try to vary up where I write and who I write with, move between tasks when I feel stuck or bored, and take breaks here and there for walks or coffee runs.
Speaking of feeling stuck—what's a piece of creative advice you've received that you want to pass along to other people?
This might be the journalism training talking, but my tried-and-true solution is writer's block is…writing through it. Just pick an entrypoint and start writing. Don’t overthink it, and don’t fall into the trap of self-editing. If it sounds unintelligible, that’s a problem for Future You. Present You should only be concerned with getting words on the page. I’m not a visual or performing artist, but I think this basic idea is applicable elsewhere too.
I’m grateful that I launched my creative career in digital media—the ultimate pressure-cooker environment, a world I loved but one that burned me out—because it made me significantly less precious about my craft. When every story has a fast turnaround, and your success hinges in part on meeting (sometimes unreasonable) deadlines, you learn how to circumvent creative blockages really quickly.
You talked about how your knowledge of astrological transits help you make adjustments to your writing practice for different seasons of life. Where should people look in their charts to understand their own relationships to creative practice?
First things first: You’re gonna need your birth chart, so pull that up. In astrology, your creative output itself is 5th House territory (along with your sex life and your children, which I’ve always thought was quite poetic. What are creative juices if not a flow of erotic energy? What is being a creative person if not “birthing” your work into existence?)
But your creative practice—the act of sitting your ass down multiple days in a row and cranking out X amount of words consistently, to the point where it becomes ritualistic—falls under the 3rd House. So, ideally, we’d look to zodiac signs of the cusp of each house, as well as the planets that rule those signs, for insight into the kind of creative work you produce and how you can best generate it. We’d also delineate any natal planets that fall in these houses.
I recognize that this requires more advanced synthesis. In lieu of that, I’d suggest just focusing on the modality of the sign that presides over your 3rd House (or, if that’s too confusing for you, your Sun sign). Modality can tell us a lot about movement and pacing, which is super useful in this context. In general, the four cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn) are fearless initiators and great at starting new projects but not so great at finishing them or staving off burnout. So they generally do well with shorter-term projects or ones that have checkpoints and breaks built in.
Fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius) make for dutiful creatives who work best under fixed conditions, but they often fixate on small stuff and slow themselves down. Essentially, they may need help troubleshooting around creative blockages or keeping things moving. They might also just need more time to sit with their work. And mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces) have no shortage of ideas but can be quite scattered or easily bored, so they need flexibility in their routines to mix things up and move between different projects as needed.
For people who want to go deeper on astrology and creative practice, do you have any recommendations?
For an accurate, holistic look at what your chart says about your creative practice, you’re gonna have to consult with a professional astrologer. Jeanna Kadlec is a fantastic writer, astrologer, and published author who offers 3rd House readings specifically for writers and creatives looking to refine their practice. I highly recommend contacting Jeanna when she reopens her books (and subscribing to her newsletter, Astrology for Writers. It’s a treasure trove of insight.)
I’d also recommend following and/or booking a reading with Jo O’Neill, whose narrative approach to astrology is one-of-a-kind; Maeg Keane, whose writing on the 5th House has consistently inspired me; and Kirah Tabourn, a seasoned pro and one of my astrology mentors-turned-friends.
Okay, one last question: what's one thing that lights your creative fire you wish you did more of?
Collaborating and building community! Every time I attend a literary event or tag-team an essay for my newsletter with my friend and writing partner Sterling, I walk away feeling inspired and fulfilled. Like, sure, creativity necessitates some degree of spending time alone with your thoughts, but writing can feel really fucking lonely sometimes. And it doesn’t have to be.
Thanks for reading this and making the creative life less lonely. If you’re excited about this new column and know someone you think I should interview, give me a shout!
See you in the real world ❣️
🌱 Nadine
