When the pen takes control.

Bronzed eye of Horus

buried for five thousand years

blinking in new light

With the Summer sun aligning

Farmers are standing in their fields

Mentally calculating yields

Age old knowledge still divining

Drying ears and stalks entwining

Golden corn heads row upon row

Proudly announcing time to mow

The lush growth topples to the scythe

Age old cycle that man may thrive

Come next Spring fresh seeds they will grow

By Kirsten Voris

I was going to let this anniversary go unacknowledged.

I must have known it was a big deal. I wrote it in my calendar. One year out. July 26th, the day I took the decision to sit down for a specific amount of time, on specific days every week, to write. No matter how I felt or what else was going on.

Guess what?

For one solid year I have been sitting down, for a specific amount of time, on specific days of the week to write.

I wasn’t going to mention it. But that’s just false modesty. And feeling shy about outing yourself is counterproductive when you’re in the business of writing personal essays.

You might be wondering how I did it.

I had some help. From the Tucson Writer’s Table. What we do, is write. For two hours. Together. At a table. Every Monday. After fifteen minutes of pre-work chitchat, there is no talking allowed. That’s it.

Up until COVID our companionable silences were held amidst the roar of a busy neighborhood restaurant. Now, we Zoom—to say hi and bye. In between, I write. I’m not sure what everyone else is doing. We keep our cameras off.

I have kept this Monday night date for almost 3 years. Without fail. Nothing interfered with Writer’s Table. Why, I wondered, couldn’t I duplicate this at home? Imagine, getting even more done.

But first, I needed a hanger for my office door.

I got stuck here for a while. Writing “do not disturb” on a piece of cardboard didn’t quite do justice to the commitment I was making to myself. Three weeks and a trip to Kinko’s later I had a laminated door hanger featuring my alter ego—the tugboat.

Tugboats are slow, and their pace is steady, no matter what they’re pulling along behind them. I’m slow and it’s okay. It’s all going to be okay. I can do this. I love my door hanger.

When it’s out, I’m never disturbed.

I’m never disturbed period, because I no longer try to write in the run-up to kitty feeding time.

As I moved into a less sporadic writing routine I could see how I’d undermined myself in the past by, for example, waiting to sit down until I was certain to be interrupted by a starving cat.

But there is a time of day when my personal alertness peak intersects with household quiet and that’s when I write. Even if I’d rather be doing something else.

My former habit was to be seized by inspiration, crank something out, over-edit, and stop. Until my writing partner shared some amazing thing he’d composed and asked, anything new from you?

I was episodically committed. I got used to not writing for ever longer periods until, eventually, I stopped jotting down the very thoughts that ignited these “seized by inspiration” cycles in the first place.

I’m not special. What I read in books about writing is also true for me. I have to be sitting down and doing the work, so I’m available when the story arrives.

And no, I’m not going to tell you how many hours a week I’ve added. But here’s what I think: the perfect time commitment is located midway between resentment and contentment.

I have hundreds of idea files on my computer. And a book draft. I used refer to these as “unfinished projects,” a phrase that fills me with shame and anxiety.

Today, there are no unfinished projects.

There is only what’s next.

This is new.

Because I am working steadily, I know I’ll get to the ideas and drafts that I want to finish. Eventually.

More importantly, there is always something next. Which I start while I’m still editing what came before. No more work gaps.

All of this has made me more confident and less fragile in the face of rejection. Which has also increased because, hello, I have more work to submit.

I could have scheduled writing years ago, instead of lurching between production and procrastination. But I was afraid.

Fear has helped me get to jobs on time, adhere to deadlines, remember promises I’ve made–to others. In fact, it keeps me perma-stressed, lest I forget something and cause disappointment or distress or inconvenience for another person.

And fear is what kept me from writing regularly. Fear of prioritizing myself.

By taking this scheduled time for me, I’d be less available. I’d be saying no to other people. Disappointing them. And I have. I’m here to tell you it’s possible to do that and not die.

In fact, I’m happier.

Now, I’ve had a taste of discipline. I can see that it will take even more discipline to write and edit one entire book. I’m in awe of you book-writing people.

And I’m in awe of me. In the past year I’ve written amazing stuff I can’t believe I came up with. I’ve written terrible stuff. I’ve felt really stoked to be writing all of it.

I don’t wish I was writing someone else’s story anymore.

Sitting down to write on a schedule has healed even this. I’m no longer comparing myself to writers who are writing, and publishing, the beautiful things I wish I had written. But didn’t. Because I was not yet committed to being a tugboat.

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Kirsten Voris is a contributor to the forthcoming anthology Embodied Healing: Survivor and Facilitator Voices from the Practice of Trauma Sensitive Yoga (North Atlantic Books) and her essays have appeared in Sonora Review, Hippocampus, Superstition Review, and others. Follow her on Twitter @bubbleate.

Me and my girlfriend Jill

Thought we’d go for a grind in the mill

The mill wheels were turning

Our passions were burning

But the motion made us both feel quite ill

Was in a meeting yesterday

hoping attendees wouldn’t find

my bored expression quite unkind

it seemed impertinent to say

that their meeting soon lost it’s way

the chairman’s voice could not be heard

but no-one else dared say a word

embarrassed faces on the screen

made a rather dismal scene

that I for one found quite absurd.

I’d like to tell you about One eyed Lou,

He drove the bus taking kids to school

You”ve probably guessed that he was half-blind

Otherwise he’d have read that sign

The kids all laughed though they knew it was wrong

But everyone could join in with this song

Etc. etc.

watch the chimpanzee

do we see a human kiss

a toothy grin appears

High in the tree I spied a bird

his feathers ruffled in the breeze

but on the branch he perched with ease

his bold attempts seemed quite absurd

in the wind his song to be heard

no other birds heard I that day

I could only surmise that they

had bowed their heads to Nature’s roar

returning to the fields once more

continuing with their bird like chores.

I took a stroll with Fay

she gave me a hint that she may

the weather was nice

we found a thing that looked like a dice

with a wink she said, “c’mon let’s play,”

Giving the finger

to our beautiful planet

Nature’s despoilers