I know that makes me a terrible person, or at least a terrible writing student, to admit this: but I did not expect to enjoy a book on craft. True, it is a fact that I love words and writing and reading so much that I decided that being a single mom and a full time teacher and already having a Masters degree was not enough and I needed an MFA. I did so because I wanted to write, and silly me, I didn’t really consider the very real possibility that there would be some scholarly writing involved, some readings dedicated completely to the process of writing. Perhaps I should have read the Stonecoast manual closer.
It was not my intention to start my first annotation assignment by reading Anne Lamott. Honestly, I had not heard of her before, another example of what a horrible writing student I actually am. But, as fate would have it, the first book that arrived at my local library was Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.
Again, I had no intention of enjoying it. None at all.
When I opened the book, the first thing I noticed was a four by four piece of white paper that a child had crudely drawn a picture of Eloise, a children’s book character about a six year old girl who lives on the top floor of the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Heroine Eloise was a girl who was unafraid of challenges and adventure, and so I decided that this was a sign by the literary goddesses that Eloise would be my guide into this brave new world of writing. Eloise was my guide through the text and I used the photo that, undoubtedly, one of the artist’s parents had used too, as a bookmark. Together, she and I would travel through the Lamott’s five worlds: Writing, The Writing Frame of Mind, Help Along the Way, Publication – and Other Reasons to Write, and The Last Class. It is always important to have a guide when starting a new journey and she was mine.
I don’t know why I assumed that Lamott was this stuffy, scholarly, Emily Dickinson-like woman, but I did. Surely, Eloise assures me, I wouldn’t choose to live in a book like that. Trust me. So I did, and before I even got through the introduction, I wanted to call Lamott up on the phone and hang out for a few hours. The writing was (is) gorgeous, but that wasn’t why I liked it. I felt like she understood every little thing I was going through: the elation of writing that perfect sentence, the fear that everything you write is utter crap, worrying about money, and the jealousy of other’s success. I felt like she was talking directly to me. I told you so, Eloise told me.
In the first section on Writing, the absolute most powerful lesson I learned was the concept of the Shitty First Draft. SFD is something that I fight with regularly. I often ask myself why it is so difficult to sit down and write when I love writing and when I am constantly writing in my head. Why is it when it’s time to actually put the brilliant story that has taken shape in my mind on paper, it comes out to be this lame, poorly written, ridiculous ball of vanity? Why is it that once on paper I look at my baby and think, “ew, you were so much prettier before you were born”? I struggle with this so often, that I usually (unfortunately) decide that it’s better to simply keep the baby inside of me where it is fabulous and perfect and brilliant.
Of course, then no one gets to appreciate it but me, and, let’s be honest, then it really isn’t writing, is it? It’s just thinking. Perhaps someday, Apple will invent a device you can plug into the USB port of your mind and you can just think your stories and they will be typed onto the little device in perfect form. Until that day comes, I have no choice but to write it down. Lamott assures her readers – and really, isn’t she only talking to me? – that it’s okay to birth that ugly baby, put it down on paper, just write it into existence. Yes, it is going to be ugly – it’s supposed to be ugly! – but then you can pretty it up, add things, take things away, and yes, perhaps even erase it entirely, but at least it’s out there in the world. I am no longer afraid of SFD.
In The Writing Frame of Mind, Lamott introduced me to the radio station that I have been listening to since I was 7 years old and started writing creatively: KFKD. You know that station, every artist has listened to it nonstop for their entire creative life. It’s that station that reminds you again and again that everything you ever have or ever will create is utter garbage and perhaps you should get a nice, safe job in a bank. (Of course, the banking industry is kind of in the toilet right now, so maybe this writing thing is the safer option right now… hmmm). Either way, it’s that constantly playing station that assures you Murphy’s Law is very much in effect and nothing will go right ever and so it’s stupid to even try. Instead, Lamott reminds us to go with the flow of the river of life, and of our creativity, to allow for temporary setbacks and fears and life getting in the way. None of those are reasons to stop writing. KFKD can be mesmerizing in its grotesqueness, and it’s easy to get so used to listening to it that you believe every word it plays. Don’t listen, Eloise wisely told me. I promised her I’d at least try.
Another lesson (more of a life lesson than writing one for me) that was in this particular section was about jealousy. Oh I am a very, very jealous person. I do not want to be a jealous person, I don’t like jealous people, it doesn’t feel good to be on either end of the jealousy – why do I do it? I guess the first reason would be that it is a natural and universal, though somewhat disheartening, emotion. The second would be that when it comes to our art, ego gets in the way big time, especially when you know your writing is ten trillion times better than the fabulously rich and published and popular friend of yours. I loved that Lamott gave us permission to be jealous – some people are rewarded in this world who we think are less deserving that we are – but that the important thing to remember is to not let that jealousy stop us from going forward. I’m working on that.
Help Along the Way reinforced some practices I’ve already made a part of my writing life. I already have a little notebook that I carry around with me to jot down lines and ideas and bits of dialog that I overhear. I consider Stonecoast my writers group that gives me unbiased, honest, sometimes brutal, but always helpful feedback on my writing. And I already have some friends, both writers and non writers, who will read my drafts (shitty and otherwise) and give me real critiques about what works and what doesn’t even work a little bit. (I count you in this category, Cait!)
The last sections in BbB were on publication and the advice she gives to her last class of students, and this was the one that scared me the most. Like all artists, I want my work to be published and accepted and praised and loved… and if it landed me a guest spot on Oprah and made me a ton of money and got a lifetime book deal, well, that would be okay with me too. But the truth is, I have no idea whether any of that will ever happen. I’ve never sent anything out for publication. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Lamott reminded me that even if my work gets published, there is no guarantee that any of that other stuff will happen. No one may like it, critics may crucify me for it, and Oprah may never call. I feel like I’m setting myself up for a lot of rejection and sadness and hard feelings. Then why do you still want it? Eloise asked me, always the devil’s advocate. And my answer? Because, like Lamott says, writing makes me feel less isolated. It doesn’t take away the bad things that happened, but somehow it helps to share them. I write because I can’t not write! (How’s that for an English teacher purposely using a double negative?) I write because I have all these stories and insights and just plain stuff going on in my brain and if I don’t get them out of there and on paper, well, I just may explode.
I may never call up a gardening expert and ask him to help me design the setting for my book. I don’t write that way. I need to write about what I know and see and feel and think. Lamott gave me permission to do that, and I like knowing that perhaps, someday, I will. I may never write a present or get over being jealous of other writers’ successes or carry around index cards. But you could, Eloise reminded me. Yes, yes I could.
BbB is due back to the library in a few weeks, and I will dutifully return it so others can enjoy it (and because I don’t want any late fees). I have seriously thought about keeping my little Eloise drawing so she can continue to guide me through this sometimes scary MFA process. But she doesn’t want me to. I know she has other work, and so I will tuck her back into the pages and I will send her back. I am both thrilled and saddened by this idea.
Despite my false starts and negative outlook, I very much enjoyed this book on craft. I plan on ordering the rest of Lamott’s books because I genuinely enjoy her voice and her style. I am confident that I would appreciate what she has to say. I may even write her a letter. I wonder if she’s on Facebook.
I used to have this fantasy that I would walk into a café in San Francisco and my three favorite authors SARK, Starhawk, and Amy Tan would all be sitting around a table sipping chai frappes and say, “Oh, we’ve been waiting for you and are so glad you’ve finally joined us!” I still have that fantasy, as silly as it seems. Only now, Anne Lamott is sitting there with them.
I can’t wait to tell her all about Eloise.
It was not my intention to start my first annotation assignment by reading Anne Lamott. Honestly, I had not heard of her before, another example of what a horrible writing student I actually am. But, as fate would have it, the first book that arrived at my local library was Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.
Again, I had no intention of enjoying it. None at all.
When I opened the book, the first thing I noticed was a four by four piece of white paper that a child had crudely drawn a picture of Eloise, a children’s book character about a six year old girl who lives on the top floor of the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Heroine Eloise was a girl who was unafraid of challenges and adventure, and so I decided that this was a sign by the literary goddesses that Eloise would be my guide into this brave new world of writing. Eloise was my guide through the text and I used the photo that, undoubtedly, one of the artist’s parents had used too, as a bookmark. Together, she and I would travel through the Lamott’s five worlds: Writing, The Writing Frame of Mind, Help Along the Way, Publication – and Other Reasons to Write, and The Last Class. It is always important to have a guide when starting a new journey and she was mine.
I don’t know why I assumed that Lamott was this stuffy, scholarly, Emily Dickinson-like woman, but I did. Surely, Eloise assures me, I wouldn’t choose to live in a book like that. Trust me. So I did, and before I even got through the introduction, I wanted to call Lamott up on the phone and hang out for a few hours. The writing was (is) gorgeous, but that wasn’t why I liked it. I felt like she understood every little thing I was going through: the elation of writing that perfect sentence, the fear that everything you write is utter crap, worrying about money, and the jealousy of other’s success. I felt like she was talking directly to me. I told you so, Eloise told me.
In the first section on Writing, the absolute most powerful lesson I learned was the concept of the Shitty First Draft. SFD is something that I fight with regularly. I often ask myself why it is so difficult to sit down and write when I love writing and when I am constantly writing in my head. Why is it when it’s time to actually put the brilliant story that has taken shape in my mind on paper, it comes out to be this lame, poorly written, ridiculous ball of vanity? Why is it that once on paper I look at my baby and think, “ew, you were so much prettier before you were born”? I struggle with this so often, that I usually (unfortunately) decide that it’s better to simply keep the baby inside of me where it is fabulous and perfect and brilliant.
Of course, then no one gets to appreciate it but me, and, let’s be honest, then it really isn’t writing, is it? It’s just thinking. Perhaps someday, Apple will invent a device you can plug into the USB port of your mind and you can just think your stories and they will be typed onto the little device in perfect form. Until that day comes, I have no choice but to write it down. Lamott assures her readers – and really, isn’t she only talking to me? – that it’s okay to birth that ugly baby, put it down on paper, just write it into existence. Yes, it is going to be ugly – it’s supposed to be ugly! – but then you can pretty it up, add things, take things away, and yes, perhaps even erase it entirely, but at least it’s out there in the world. I am no longer afraid of SFD.
In The Writing Frame of Mind, Lamott introduced me to the radio station that I have been listening to since I was 7 years old and started writing creatively: KFKD. You know that station, every artist has listened to it nonstop for their entire creative life. It’s that station that reminds you again and again that everything you ever have or ever will create is utter garbage and perhaps you should get a nice, safe job in a bank. (Of course, the banking industry is kind of in the toilet right now, so maybe this writing thing is the safer option right now… hmmm). Either way, it’s that constantly playing station that assures you Murphy’s Law is very much in effect and nothing will go right ever and so it’s stupid to even try. Instead, Lamott reminds us to go with the flow of the river of life, and of our creativity, to allow for temporary setbacks and fears and life getting in the way. None of those are reasons to stop writing. KFKD can be mesmerizing in its grotesqueness, and it’s easy to get so used to listening to it that you believe every word it plays. Don’t listen, Eloise wisely told me. I promised her I’d at least try.
Another lesson (more of a life lesson than writing one for me) that was in this particular section was about jealousy. Oh I am a very, very jealous person. I do not want to be a jealous person, I don’t like jealous people, it doesn’t feel good to be on either end of the jealousy – why do I do it? I guess the first reason would be that it is a natural and universal, though somewhat disheartening, emotion. The second would be that when it comes to our art, ego gets in the way big time, especially when you know your writing is ten trillion times better than the fabulously rich and published and popular friend of yours. I loved that Lamott gave us permission to be jealous – some people are rewarded in this world who we think are less deserving that we are – but that the important thing to remember is to not let that jealousy stop us from going forward. I’m working on that.
Help Along the Way reinforced some practices I’ve already made a part of my writing life. I already have a little notebook that I carry around with me to jot down lines and ideas and bits of dialog that I overhear. I consider Stonecoast my writers group that gives me unbiased, honest, sometimes brutal, but always helpful feedback on my writing. And I already have some friends, both writers and non writers, who will read my drafts (shitty and otherwise) and give me real critiques about what works and what doesn’t even work a little bit. (I count you in this category, Cait!)
The last sections in BbB were on publication and the advice she gives to her last class of students, and this was the one that scared me the most. Like all artists, I want my work to be published and accepted and praised and loved… and if it landed me a guest spot on Oprah and made me a ton of money and got a lifetime book deal, well, that would be okay with me too. But the truth is, I have no idea whether any of that will ever happen. I’ve never sent anything out for publication. I wouldn’t even know where to start. Lamott reminded me that even if my work gets published, there is no guarantee that any of that other stuff will happen. No one may like it, critics may crucify me for it, and Oprah may never call. I feel like I’m setting myself up for a lot of rejection and sadness and hard feelings. Then why do you still want it? Eloise asked me, always the devil’s advocate. And my answer? Because, like Lamott says, writing makes me feel less isolated. It doesn’t take away the bad things that happened, but somehow it helps to share them. I write because I can’t not write! (How’s that for an English teacher purposely using a double negative?) I write because I have all these stories and insights and just plain stuff going on in my brain and if I don’t get them out of there and on paper, well, I just may explode.
I may never call up a gardening expert and ask him to help me design the setting for my book. I don’t write that way. I need to write about what I know and see and feel and think. Lamott gave me permission to do that, and I like knowing that perhaps, someday, I will. I may never write a present or get over being jealous of other writers’ successes or carry around index cards. But you could, Eloise reminded me. Yes, yes I could.
BbB is due back to the library in a few weeks, and I will dutifully return it so others can enjoy it (and because I don’t want any late fees). I have seriously thought about keeping my little Eloise drawing so she can continue to guide me through this sometimes scary MFA process. But she doesn’t want me to. I know she has other work, and so I will tuck her back into the pages and I will send her back. I am both thrilled and saddened by this idea.
Despite my false starts and negative outlook, I very much enjoyed this book on craft. I plan on ordering the rest of Lamott’s books because I genuinely enjoy her voice and her style. I am confident that I would appreciate what she has to say. I may even write her a letter. I wonder if she’s on Facebook.
I used to have this fantasy that I would walk into a café in San Francisco and my three favorite authors SARK, Starhawk, and Amy Tan would all be sitting around a table sipping chai frappes and say, “Oh, we’ve been waiting for you and are so glad you’ve finally joined us!” I still have that fantasy, as silly as it seems. Only now, Anne Lamott is sitting there with them.
I can’t wait to tell her all about Eloise.
