MORE ABOUT MONDAYS

I want to talk more about those Mondays with Kate.

We spent the whole day mostly talking, only getting around to two twenty-minute writing sessions and a beautiful poem by Kenneth Rexroth, but that was okay. The whole day was a good poem. Friendship, cold feet, feeding the cat, filling the ashtray with cigarette butts. And if we were smart it would have continued into Monday night when we left each other and were alone in our separate worlds.

Katagiri Roshi says, "Our goal is to have kind consideration for all sentient beings every moment forever." This does not mean put a good poem on paper and then spit at our lives, curse cars, and cut off someone on the freeway. It means carry the poem away from the desk and into the kitchen. That is how we will survive as writers, no matter how little money we make in the American economy and how little acceptance we get in the magazines. We are not writing for money and acceptance---although that would be nice.

The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world, and why not finally carry that secret out with our bodies into the living rooms and porches, backyards and grocery stores? Let the whole thing flower: the poem and the person writing the poem. And let us always be kind in the world.

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SPONTANEOUS WRITING BOOTHS

Do not feel left out when your school, church, Zen center, day care center has a bazaar, carnival, rummage sale. Don't think you have nothing to contribute. Simply set up a spontaneous writing booth. All you need is a pile of blank paper, some fast-writing pens, a table, a chair, and a sign saying, "Poems on Demand" or "Poems in the Moment" or "You name the subject, I'll write on it."

In Japan there are stories of great Zen poets writing a superb haiku and then putting it in a bottle in a river or nearby stream and letting it go. For anyone who is a writer, this is a profound example of attachment. The spontaneous poetry booth is the twentieth-century equivalent. It is practice in unselfconsciousness. Write, don't reread it, let it go into the world. There were several times when i felt I really hit home in the writing, but I just handed the sheet of paper over to the customer across the table and went on.

Having a writing booth is excellent practice in letting go. Let go completely. Let yourself totally be a writer from now on.

A SENSATION OF SPACE

When you want to write in a certain form---a novel, short story, poem---read a lot of writing in that form. Watch how that form is paced. What is the first sentence?e? What makes it finished? When you read a lot in that form, it becomes imprinted inside you, so when you sit down to write, you write in that structure. For instance, if you are a poet and want to write a novel, you have to learn to write full sentences, the steady hand of setting scenes, knowing the color of the tablecloth and how the writer gets her character to move across the room to the coffeepot.

We may write three novels before we write a good one. So form is important, we should learn form, but we should also remember to fill form with life. This takes practice.

A LARGE FIELD TO WANDER IN

Suzuki Roshi says in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind that "The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him." You need a large field in writing too. Don't pull in the reins too quickly. Give yourself tremendous space to wander in, to be utterly lost with no name, and then come back and speak.

THE GOODY-TWO-SHOES NATURE

In order to improve writing, you have to practice just like any other sport. But don't be dutiful and make it into a blind routine. "yes, I have written an hour a today and I wrote an hour yesterday and an hour the day before." Don't just put in your time. That is not enough. You have to make great effort. Be willing to put tour whole life on the line when you sit down for writing practice. Otherwise you are just mechanically pushing the pen across the page and intermittently looking at the clock to see if your time is up.

NO HINDRANCES

When you accept writing as what you are supposed to do, after you've tried everything else---marriage, hippiedom, traveling, living in Minnesota or New York, teaching, spiritual practices---there's finally no place else to go. So no matter how big the resistance, there is one day, there is the next day, and the writing work ahead. You can't depend on its going smoothly day after day. It won't be that way. You might have one day that is superb, productive, and the next time you write, you are ready to sign up on a ship headed for Saudi Arabia. There are no guarantees. You might think you have finally created a rhythm with three days running, and the next day the needle scratches the record and you squeak through it, teeth on edge.

See the big picture. You are committed to writing or finding out about it. Continue under all circumstances. Don't be rigid, though. If one day you have to take your kids to the dentist when it is your time to write, write in the dentist's office or don't write. Just stay in touch underneath with your commitment for this wild, silly, and wonderful writing practice. Always stay friendly toward it. It's easier to come back to a good friend than an enemy. Dogen, a thirteenth-century Zen Buddhist master, said, "Every day is a good day." That is the ultimate attitude we should have toward our writing, even if we have good and bad days.

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