Category: Writing Life

What Makes Your Writing Worthy?

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

I had a big thought last night while I was sitting zazen. I know the point of zazen isn’t to have big thoughts, but it is to end up with “big mind,” so I feel justified. My big thought was: I associate meaning and worth in my writing with monetization potential and validation. 

Huh.

I have been feeling so lost with my writing lately. I am bursting with ideas. I have a memoir I feel I should write… for the good of humanity you see… and then I have the idea for two novels… because I’m an overachiever like that… I have the idea for another memoir that may not save the world, but just might amuse it, and I have this idea for keeping a spirituality notebook and making it a blog as I progress into Zen study while holding firmly to my Pagan foundation… because that’s kind of weird and cool right? But I have been tossing and turning internally in agonizing debate over which one gets my attention NOW. None of them seem fully satisfying and/or they seem far too challenging. 

With the memoir that might save the world and the memoir that may not save the world but might amuse it, there is some very dark stuff that must be written. I attempted it last year and it knocked me flat on my keister multiple times. In fact, every time I have tried it over the years, it has knocked me flat on my keister. It’s like I see something that could really help a lot of people on the other side of a 12 foot high electric fence, and I want to be the hero, grab it, and bring it to humanity, but every time I run toward it and fling myself up against that fence, ZAP! And I fall backward, stunned, half dead, full Einstein hair with singed tips, smoke coming out of my ears. And I walk away limping and saying to myself, “Too costly. Just too costly. Surely the wise thing is to step away,” which is probably true, but a week or so later, there I am staring at that revelatory thing on the other side of the fence like, “This time I’m sure I can take it.” I run for it again and, ZAP! Again.

Which seems sort of noble on the one hand, but on the other, it does get all tied up with validation, doesn’t it? In zazen, you are supposed to sit without a “gaining thought” which is to say, you sit because you sit, whether it’s good or bad, whether anyone congratulates you or not. You don’t have a good sit or bad sit, or good for you for sitting or shame on you for not sitting, you just… sit. So even if my goal is to save the world, and I did, in fact, save the world, that is still being validated by the reaction of others, which is something I never would have put together before, being so terribly distracted by the flapping of my big red hero’s cape and that shiny shiny thing on the other side of the electric fence. 

Then there’s the novels. My story ideas are really fun and interesting, I think. But there are some problems: I worry I don’t have the stamina and sticktoitiveness to hang in there long enough to finish a whole novel. An old “friend” of mine once said I lacked the attention span to write a whole book and little did he know that was a wound that would ooze to this day. So I worry about that. I worry about trying and failing and having it be yet another abandoned project. I also worry that my fiction really isn’t that good. I worry about how hard it will be and do I have the mental muscle for it. I worry my stories are interesting to me but cartoony to everyone else. I worry about spending all this time and effort on something that may never get published and then, the internal validation/monetization gremlin says, “What’s the point? If you don’t end up with a vast audience and millions of dollars and that JK Rowling level scratch and applause, what’s the point of putting in the work?”

The point, Mr. Gremlin, would seem to be doing the work for the sake of the work. You sit because you sit. You write because you write. No one pays you to sit, and yet you sit. You should write whether anyone is paying you to write. Sitting can be hard. Writing can be harder. The harder, the more rewarding. The reward is in the doing, not the JK Rowling scratch and applause. 

In Zen Buddhist monasteries, a work period is called “samu.” In my, admittedly very limited, understanding, this work, which is sometimes hard work like farm chores or cleaning every corner of a multi-paned Japanese screen, is also a form of zazen. The work is not separated from the practice and is meant to push your limits as much as 30-40-60 minutes of sitting is meant to push your limits. For me, the novel would be samu. It would be the work. It would be approaching a zendo the size of the Colosseum with only a dollar store toothbrush and a bar of Zest to clean it with and no one to tell me I did a great job after.

Which might, I suppose if we are looking at this from a proper zen perspective, be a really excellent use of my time. 

Then there is the spirituality stuff. Writing in a notebook and on a blog on spirituality, my favorite topic of all topics, my favorite thing in this or any other of my thousand lifetimes. I will happily chat away at my husband for hours on spiritual topics while he politely listens and internally reruns the complete Metallica discography in his mind. Even when I have nothing to say when I show up and write, I always have something to say about spirituality, even if it’s something silly. I wrote a koan the other day about the fresh pan of brownies I made: my husband was asleep, who eats the brownies alone? I started a Substack for spiritual writing. I thought about revitalizing my WordPress. I got all jazzed about it but, here I sit, still wrestling with: Is this what I SHOULD be writing?

I sit zazen in a chair right now. I’m overweight and out of shape and sitting on the floor in half lotus is unthinkable for me right now. My groin aches just thinking about it. So I sit in a straight-backed Queen Anne chair, keep my chin tucked and my spine long, and let that be enough for now. Sitting is hard enough without getting into Olympic level pretzel twists that are simply beyond my body at this moment. Writing about spirituality is like that for me. It’s like zazen in a chair. Easier and a lot more pleasurable, but easy to shame myself for it being too easy. Easy to shame myself for, perhaps I am not trying hard enough. Perhaps I should be pushing my limits more. Maybe just ten minutes on a cushion? As if Suzuki Roshi is going to rise up from my suburban rose bed, float into the house, and say, “Yes yes! Now you are worthy zazen!”

You see… there’s the Validation Gremlin again. The spiritual writing is challenging at times, but I love it, and once it flows, it feels smooth and easy. But no hardcore grit influencer is going to stroke my ego over it, so how do I know I’m doing enough?

And in addition to that: Very few people are reading it, so the Validation Gremlin gets involved with his good pal Monetization Monkey and we’ve got a bloody mess of fruit and metaphorical feces throwing going on in my mind. If it isn’t HARD, is it enough? If no one praises you, who cares? If you’re not earning a handsome living by it, what is your life worth?

What a strange thing, I thought in my big thought last night during zazen, trying to keep my eyes on the floor but flicking them up occasionally to catch the little electric tea light in front of my sand colored Buddha statue. What an odd thing that humans in general, and this human in particular, have gotten to associate their personal worth with what people think of them and how much they are getting paid for it. Perhaps worth should be something internally defined. How rich is your experience? How full is your heart? How deep is your joy? Have you helped relieve the suffering of yourself and others?

Big mind and little sand colored Buddha seemed to whisper to me last night that these in writing, as in life, are the primary questions not “how much” and “who’s watching?” 

So what are my answers?

My richest experiences are spiritual experiences. My exploration of spirituality is, besides the love of my family, that which fills my heart most fully. My greatest joy is exploring this topic which I find endlessly fascinating. Letting myself study it, practice it, experience it, and write about it relieves my suffering more than anything else. 

Will writing about it relieve the suffering of others?

I really can’t know, but I can hope. If “brownie koan” and “Validation Gremlin and Monetization Monkey” ring true for just one person, or even gives them a smile, then yes. For one tiny moment, I might relieve the suffering of others. 

So there you have it. That’s the worth that’s really worth it for me.

What’s yours?

-M. Ashley

I Wrote. Did You Die? (Writing Life Updates)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

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

I Guess I Was a Writer All Along

~ M. Ashley ~ 2 Comments

When my fiancé got into bed with me last night he started talking about how he used to tape whole albums off the radio when he was a kid. He got specific. He had to have his mom buy him TDK 90 minute blank tapes—the solid gray ones in the gold wrappers, $2 apiece and sold in packs of five. Maxell was so-so—he would settle for Maxell, but Memorix with its clear tapes and groovy shapes all over was the worst of the worst and he wouldn’t put a single note on that. 

He talked about cataloguing the tapes—one album per side. Listening to the DJs talk about the albums and all the music trivia. He still listens to music talk, constantly. He follows about six hundred rock music podcasts and can DJ every song on Sirius with about thirty times the DJ juice as whatever has-been they’ve hired. He is an encyclopedia of rock. Sometimes I’ll turn on classic rock stations that I only marginally like just to give him the opportunity to fan his feathers for me, and it is glorious.

He told me he tried the guitar and piano as a kid because those are the types of instruments a blind kid is supposed to go for, but it wasn’t until someone put him in front of a drum kit that he thought yes…. I can really find my way around here. It all clicked along with the click track and he was a drummer, through-and-through forevermore. He started doing session work in LA by the time he was 14. At 50, he plays in three different bands and bursts out with drum solos on his knees randomly while I’m making dinner, while we’re waiting on an Uber, and even sometimes in the bathroom, (don’t tell him I told you that). 

Music, and rock music specifically, and drumming even more specifically than that is the way he makes his way in the world and he has no internal conflict whatsoever about that. I admire that. More than admire: I envy that. More than envy: I am deeply jealous of his soul’s love for its native art. And I wish my soul were that way about writing. It’s getting there, but it has taken a long long time.

Sometimes, when I’m depressed, I find myself doing “depressed” things long before I ever acknowledge I’m depressed. I stop taking care of myself and dressing in nice clothes. I curl up in bed and watch a lot of nostalgia bomb reruns I’ve seen ten thousand times. Walking from room to room makes me tired. I cook the simplest things for dinner—lots of blue box and ramen. But it isn’t until days and days later, when I find myself wrapped up in my blanket cocoon in bed, barely able to move, that I think, “Oh wow. I must be having a depression.”

It’s kind of like that with me and writing. 

While Angel was obsessing over TDK vs. Memorex as a kid, I was writing. I wrote my first real poem in the fifth grade and the teacher loved it so much, she posted it in the window for the whole school to see. I still remember it:

The moon is a jagged diamond

Hanging and waiting in suspense

For someone to pluck him from this mine of darkness

That holds him captive

Captive in a sea of stars

That no one dares enter

For fear they’d never return

We were learning about metaphors and similes when I wrote that. I chose metaphor.

I used to ride the bus to school composing poems. As I grew, the poetry onslaught continued. I’d type them on my little Canon electric typewriter that printed a whole line at a time, and put them in packets in the kind of folders you’d put school reports in. I’d give the packets titles and slip them to my teacher on the sly. 

I put my poetry in the front cover of my clear-covered three ring binder in high school and changed it out regularly. I wrote down song lyrics from memory and broke the lines apart the way I thought they should be broken.

I wrote satirical pieces in junior high, high school, and college and got in major trouble with teachers and schoolmates over it, but kept doing it anyway. 

I sat in the wood-paneled study room in college with my left hand pressed against my forehead writing short stories longhand for hours as day turned to night, turned to very late night. I’d dance around air-conducting baroque music thinking of what next things my characters should be doing and what most clever ways I could say it. 

All through the eight years I was trafficked—even then during that horrendous abuse, I spent so much of my “free” time alone at the keyboard writing endlessly about what was happening to me. I filled countless file folders on my shiny new Gateway computer and more spiral notebooks than I could ever keep track of. Words words words as Shakespeare would say. They didn’t always make sense during that time, but they kept me anchored to something, even if it was just my own hands moving, the click of the keys, the scratch of the pen, the flick of one page to the next.

I went to the Iowa Summer Writers’ Workshop twice and found my joy and my people. I didn’t bring an essay for class. I wrote it while I was there. I stayed up late in my hotel room writing it. I dashed into the college computer lab the day it was my turn to be workshopped, typed it out at emergency speed, and ran in to class with my ten copies, wet ink drying on my fingers. 

And after I survived the trafficking, while I was barely surviving survival, when I was desperately poor and living in an apartment that had roaches in the dishwasher, when I was working at Walmart and smoking with old Southern ladies and bitching about customers, managers, and my swollen feet, I never stopped writing. I started a blog about my Walmart experiences. I started a blog about world spirituality. I started a blog about my burgeoning Paganism. I started a blog about 12 step recovery. I started a blog about tarot. I started this blog. I started more blogs. I started a blog… I started a blog… I started a blog… 

And now, twenty years after the trafficking ended and nearly forty years after I wrote my first poem, and probably over fifty blog starts later, I am still writing. And I am reading Writing Down the Bones and realizing for the first time, after all this time, that I am a writer. I am a writer all the way down to my bones and always have been. I am a writer the way Angel is a drummer. I am a writer the way Natalie Goldberg is a writer.

It’s how I make my way in the world. It always has been whether I wanted it to be or not. My passion for the written word has burned for decades in spite of myself. 

I wonder what will happen when I embrace its burning as myself. 

My very own self.

We shall see.

-M. Ashley

Uber Gangster Heaven

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

In an Uber, coming home from an appointment an hour away, stuck in traffic, the driver spent the first half of the ride telling us how important unions are and how he went around stumping for the union all the time when he worked at the Albertson’s warehouse, and then in the second half of the ride, he told us how he wants to get a collage of American gangsters tattooed on his leg (he had tats all over, including his face). He wanted everyone from Al Capone to El Chapo (not an American gangster, but I kept that to myself), to all these relatively current drug lords I’ve never heard of, and then somehow we ended up with him telling me how crack is made (or so he’s heard) and how much Percs and Fentanyl cost on the street (or so he’s heard). When we got to the destination, I told him that that ride was the most fun I’ve ever had in an Uber by far, which is a fact! I told him he was fantastic and gave him a big fat tip. My male friend, more conservative than I, was not thrilled, but I was in Michelle heaven!

I love people so much.

My only regret is that I forget to tell him he needed to add Jimmy Hoffa to his tattoo. Dang it!

-M. Ashley

Authentic African Musical Tiger Says

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

In a moment a pain, crying and praying, my god brought me this. The radio playing mysterious drums and me… I had to look. Authentic African music surely… with a tiger on the cover. A tiger.

Hard to pain cry and SMH cry laughing at the same time.

And if that weren’t enough: That look in the authentic African music tiger’s eye: “You… Hey you… Hey you there lady, crying. You! Authentic African musical tiger says, RELAX!!!”

And buddy, you’d better fucking relax.

-M. Ashley

Missing Frank Bidart (poem)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Oh my poet-y friend… how I have missed thee.
I have missed myself defacing your books with
Purple ink notes like, “Love it!” and “Scary.”

Remember that time I humiliated myself on a
Plane pompously overblowing poetry to a
Stranger who turned out to be a PhD in poetry

My nose in your book
My ass on my shoulders
Me talking out of it

But then you were there for me
For that—for my ass face too
And my starry eyes for you.

-M. Ashley

Poetry Goals (poem)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

I would love to swan around and
say dusty things about poetry and
have everyone give a damn and
have groupies who show me their boobs
and read at Carnegie Hall to 53,000
screaming teeny boppers in poodle skirts

and all that other shit
that real poets do
and don’t actually do

but always do
in my sweaty
jealous
glory hogging
little mind.

-M. Ashley

Self-Portrait: 2022 Is Also All About My Hair

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

“There is a lot of breakage.” Don’t we all feel that way?

I balked when she said it and immediately went to defend myself. It must be the scrunchie I had near permanently in my mop since the beginning of the pandemic. It’s because I hadn’t had it cut since then. It’s because the hair is in terrible condition because of pandemic neglect and not, dear gods, because it’s falling out. It’s just broken not heading for the hills. It’s just broken, not endangered. It’s just broken—more, healthy, unbroken hair is just behind it.

I got it cut in December 2021 and I feel like a human again. The broken hairs are still broken, but the unbroken ones are no longer frayed like D-grade straw, looking like a witch’s hair. Gods, was I ever embarrassed when I walked my straw haired witch’s self into the Great Clips and asked them to whack the mess off. The stylist was understanding, matter of fact as the hay hit the floor, and gave me a marvelous new start, jawline length, relief from all the burden of the last two years that had fallen well past my shoulders and almost all the way down to my waist.

So the broken ones are still broken, but they’re also still growing and now don’t have so far to go to catch up to their unbroken sisters. The mop isn’t so long that I have to keep it up in a scrunchie anymore. I don’t have to be bound all the time. No more mass breakage is imminent. 2022 is going to be a good year.

How much further can I carry this hairy pandemic metaphor? Let’s see:

The thing about the short curly hair is that there is no second chance. There is no second day hair so, if you’re going somewhere, if anyone else is meant to see you, you must must must take care of it day by day. It’s a hassle when we’ve all gotten so used to not caring much about ourselves as we huddle and hide away. But also a sign of health, this hassle, and anything, even if it’s vanity, that forces you to bathe and primp and proper yourself, is a good thing and a godsend in a time when it’s far too easy just to let go.

With the short curly do that gives no second chances, I wake up from tossing nights looking like Einstein. That’s why I was able to come up with such completely original, genius, and insightful observations about the pandemic vis-a-vis my hair.

Original, I tell you. Original.

I wish you all the best and healthiest in 2022. My goal is to be here more and make more super genius and purely original observations with both my words and my art, photographic and otherwise. My goal is to read more of your work as well. My hope is we will inspire each other. My hope is we will inspire each other enough so as to give each other the tingles. My hope is we will inspire each other enough that, tingling together, it makes our collective hair, broken and unbreakable, stand on end.

-M. Ashley

Photo: My submission for this week’s 52 Frames challenge, “Self-Portrait” I’m calling it “Gallows Humor.” Taken with an iPhone 10. Flash did not fire.

Autumn Walk Diaries: Smoke and Fire

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment
Next-day smoke from the University Fire

The thing this morning was smoke.

We walk at around nine or ten and, at around nine or ten, the scene over Little Mountain towards Devore and the Cajon Pass was bleak.

We wish for gray skies here. We hope for it. We pray for it. Some of us may even bay at the moon and dance for it—thirsty, drought stricken, dead lawn denizens that we are. But that gray ain’t rain clouds, brother.

Little Mountain was on fire yesterday—not our bit of it, but the bit of it one neighborhood away, closer to the freeway where my great aunt and uncle lived for forty years, north of the 215 freeway, south of all those houses… all those houses. Everyone was evacuated. Water drop helicopters landed in the neighborhood park. City and county fire descended and ascended upon it from all possible angles. They put the fire down so fast, it barely made the local news and was but a mild ripple even amongst the busybody neighbors on Nextdoor.

Little Mountain is on fire a lot. Our people know how to fight that fire. Our people have always been victorious. Not a single house or business has ever been burned in that spot. We are very blessed. We are very lucky. We are willful that we go on living here, year after year, fire after fire… after fire after fire after fire.

So this morning, the thing was a sky over the mountain filled with orangey gray that smells like God’s barbecue and promises nothing but swimming pools, A/C filters, and formerly pink lungs full of ash.

Weirdly, though, a hopeful sight: smoke in the sky, no longer connected to the earth below—no longer a real threat, no longer a panic, no longer everyone’s nightmare. A little relief. More than a little gratitude all those houses were saved and we can go back from praying our neighbors make it, to praying one day we get friendlier clouds filled with rain.

-M.

Photo Prose: Dread Box

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Picking up any pen is hard. Opening my notebook is one of the Herculean trials—the hard one.

Getting past the rickety-ness is worse still. It’s like hearing Atlas’ ancient knees pop as he hefts the Earth one more day. One more day. One more day.

I dread goals. I dread the lazy, yawning “what next” after I reach one. I dread not reaching any.

I dread being a flake—but worse, a joyless flake. No one loves a joyless flake like no one loves a fat person who is not jolly. I dread also being the fat person who is not jolly.

I dread my credit card payments. I keep my dreaded credit cards under my dreaded pens to keep me from the dreadful using them.

I keep lip balm under the dread pens and cards. Most of all, I dread being kissed unready.

-M.
Photography Playbook Prompt: Something you dread.