inhale, exhale, write.

How was your writing retreat in Prague, I said.

So good, KAK said, but I didn’t actually write much. Too busy taking notes and workshopping stories and meeting with teachers and living in that gorgeous city.

You were filling your creative well, I said.

Inspire also means to breathe, KAK said, so you inhale the experiences and as you exhale, you write about all the things you inhaled.

We were using different words to say the same thing.

Her words, however, trilled a familiar tune in me because, breathing, it’s something I do every day. I do it without thought, without effort, and with my eyes closed or open. Is writing really as easy as that? Can it be? Could it be? Maybe not. Probably not. But this is a simple way for me to approach the big bad beast of fumbling my way through my story. And overcoming that fear has been much too difficult of late.

I now know I just have to take this one breath at a time.