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This month, one of our newest additions to the Okay Donkey team, Fiction Reader Samantha Borek, shares her thoughts and tips on writing as “a magical ritual that we use to make sense of the world around us.” We’ve also got some exciting updates to the OKD masthead, plus our usual shoutouts and links.

Enjoy this month’s newsletter!

We’re excited to announce that Emily Blair is Okay Donkey’s newest Associate Poetry Editor! In addition, we’ve got three new Poetry Readers: Andrew Doll, Michelle Li, and Penny Wei. Thank you to everyone who applied to work with us, and welcome to the team, new folks!

by Samantha Borek, Fiction Reader

Human beings are creatures of habit, of ritual. A 2013 study ”Rituals Alleviate Grieving for Loved Ones, Lovers, and Lotteries” explored how rituals help people across religions, cultures, and communities cope with their feelings. In the study, a group of people were told that someone among them would be given $100, while the rest would be split into two groups: folks who just had to sit with their loss, and those who would perform an entirely made-up ritual. When the researchers checked in on the groups later, the people who had performed the ritual had mostly processed their disappointment and moved on, while the others were still disgruntled.

Writing, in and of itself, is a magical ritual that we use to make sense of the world around us. It’s alchemy in which we turn the cold iron of our lives into gold. But what about when we just can’t sit down to the page? When our thoughts and feelings are such a jumbled mess that we can’t seem to concentrate on the task at hand? When we’re pulled in many directions by inspiration, work, kids, the chaos of the world, and so on?

Before I sat down to write this newsletter, I lit a candle, one that I hand-rolled in herbs of healing and creation like chamomile and coltsfoot. Then, I poured water from the New Moon into a seashell I plucked from a beach on Inis Mór last spring and put a slice of bread in my miniature cast iron cauldron. I do this almost every time I need just that little nudge to lock in on working. You see, I’m a procrastinator by nature, and I work best under pressure. Until I don’t. That’s when I have to ask for some intercession from my personal spiritual guides.

I like to use ritual in order to connect to the divine creativity within myself. To do that, I like to connect with my ancestors, with Brigid (goddess/saint of poets and many other things in Irish lore), and therefore, myself. This is why my personal ritual for writing is so specific. These are offerings I give to my guides that are rooted in ancestral practice as well as my own UPG (unverified personal gnosis, or things that I feel intuitively are best practices that I can’t attribute to tradition). The result is that in taking that time, I can regulate myself enough to focus.

But you don’t have to be my level of woo-woo to do a ritual (even though folk beliefs often deemed “superstitious” or “backwards” are rooted in observable and tangible reality of our ancestors). So, the next time you feel like you need to write, but it feels impossible to show up to the page, think about one small thing you can do to set yourself up, such as:

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