Spellcasting.

As I have already said the aim of this 366 day gig is intended to get my witchy juices flowing good and proper again.  So far I am pondering the basics, or what I consider to be the basics, anyway.  Today I am pondering spells.

Yes I cast spells.

 As already said you gotta be participating in the craft to call yourself a witch.  I have been casting since I was 14.  I did stop for a little while in my late teens up until my early 20's, but ever since then I have cast some sort of spell pretty much on a daily basis.  When put like that it sounds quite astonishing, but it is just something that witches do and I most certainly haven't thought about it like that before.

In the early days I pretty much read, word for word, from books and when working within groups I followed the instructions I was given there.  As I grew more confident with my witchy self I began changing things, so a spell read in book would have been altered to suit my own needs.  Eventually I stopped using spell books that other people had written and started writing my own.
A few years back when I first started blogging I did share one or two of my own spells, but I got so paranoid that other people would pass them off as their own I eventually removed them.  Nowadays I don't post my own spellwork on the internet.  This isn't because I think everyone is out to get me and rip me off, it is because I have considered writing some time in the future when I am not home edding and if these spells are already out there, they could be adapted and used by another budding witchy author, costing me some success.

My DD's are really into the whole witch thing nowadays and have often asked me to write spells for them.  But I am a big believer in spells and the like having the personal touch - it isn't vital, but you know yourself better than anyone else so it figures that you know what is best to say/write in a spell.  As cliched and tacky as it may sound, the best way to start if you are unsure is to keep it like a poem, short, sweet and rhyming.
Of course that last statement is bound to have people groaning and cringing, but you are trying to create something you can work with and something you are going to be able to remember, not a huge OTT 3 page short story!  By adopting a simple format you can put your needs into the spell and still manage to keep it short.

As with everything else, practice makes perfect!