I’m going to sit down to write, and no one is going to die.

That’s how I’ve been getting myself to the page this week. I drag myself to myself to my big puffy chair, settle in… settle in some more, take a sip of water, a sip of coffee… another sip of coffee, hover my fingers over the keys, another sip of water and I say, “I am going to sit down and write, and no one is going to die.”

Because the truth is, when you’re facing that page, and the anxiety is on you, it really feels like someone is about to die. At least it does for me.

I have been reading a lot of writerly inspirational books lately, mainly Natalie Goldberg. I’ve read four of hers in the last two months, which I know is overkill because just last night, as I was finishing The Great Spring, I found myself coming up panting to the finish line thinking, “If this chick talks about her solar beer can adobe one more time…”

Funny thing that. She waxes on endlessly about the beauty and magic of New Mexico. When my mom and best friend rescued me from Oklahoma and brought me back from California, we drove through New Mexico and it was nothing but scrubby desert as far as the eye could see. It looked exactly like the drive from San Bernardino, CA to Las Vegas, which is three hours of sheer brown blah, only in the case of New Mexico, there was a sign before you entered declaring it the “Land of Enchantment.” As we drove through, my best friend said, “I don’t know guys. I’m not feeling really enchanted right now.” 

I said, “Me either. No enchantment back here.” 

“Enchanted yet?” she asked my mom. 

“Nope, no enchantment here either.” Maybe Natalie Goldberg took it all to put into her books.

But other than that, I have gotten a ton out of them. I started sitting zazen because I felt like if that could give her this juicy way of looking at life and the discipline to sit down and write every day even when somebody out there’s life clearly hangs in the balance every single time, maybe that’s something I need to try. And I did. And it has been life altering in the best way.

I couldn’t tell you why exactly. Mainly I sit there in the zazen posture trying to keep my eyes down and unfocused and my back is screaming because posture is hard for someone so used to slouching and my monkey mind is going ape shit and I think the whole time clearly I’m about to die, but then it’s over and life is… different. I’ve been getting to the page, for one thing, consistently. Not in huge bursts here and there—days long marathons followed by months long stretches of sheer nothingness like that New Mexico drive, but every day, twenty minutes at least, no matter what. Returning and returning no matter how much my insides scream that someone’s life is on the line, probably mine, or that it’s going to be terrible, which it is sometimes, or I don’t have the energy and 20 minutes of focus seems like 20 Everests stacked on top of each other. I’ve been getting to the page anyway. That change is dramatic.

It has also somehow stoked my courage about submitting my work. I am over here sitting on 13 years of truly solid poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and I have been doing next to nothing with it. I submitted a bit in 2015 and was the editor of a small, doomed literary journal that year for about ten minutes—I even got a couple of publications, but after that? Zilch. Just accumulating work, me here in my comfy chair, file folders growing fatter all the time. 

But since I started sitting zazen, I have been getting what I call these white puffy clouds of insight. They just drift gently by, they don’t push, they don’t insist, they just drift in, whisper “what if…” then drift back out again. At the beginning of this week, one such little puffy white cloud drifted in and said, “Why don’t you submit that funny poem you wrote about the IRS in the zendo to Rattle Poets Respond?’ And you know what? Weirdly, and completely uncharacteristically of me, I did it. I just got right over myself and did it.

I got rejected, which stings no lie, but it broke the seal and now, seven days later, I have submitted two poetry packets to four different places, two nonfiction pieces, and one flash fiction piece. Some of the places to which I’ve submitted are contests in which I probably only have a tiny snowball’s chance, but hey… you can’t win if you don’t play. I haven’t been playing for a very, very long time. It feels good to be back in the game.

I submitted so much that I had to get back into my ancient, dusty Duotrope account and get myself organized. What a wonderful tool (not a commercial for Duotrope). I can’t tell you the satisfaction of looking at that big long list of submitted work, simmering away, and knowing that I am now actually living the life of a professional writer. I’m not just futzing with the keys and dreaming about it. I’m doing it. Day in, day out, one finished piece at a time, one submission at a time, over and over as long as it takes. 

But still sometimes it takes a gargantuan effort to drag my ass to my writing chair. I have literally hidden under the blankets from it a couple of times this week. My innards told me yesterday that Goldberg was becoming too soft, so I listened to a little of Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, which you must read if you haven’t, and that blasted me out from under the covers if for no other reason than I really wanted him to stop yelling at me.

Yes, drill sergeant! I will once again unto the breach! The enemy Resistance is at my back, my front, and both sides, but I will unto that breach while the breaching is good and continue to make this literary life come alive! 

Until next week, I wish you all happy… and relatively fearless… writing.

-M. Ashley