Secret Santa was only one of the distractions we created to prevent our souls from rotting like a crab apple caught beneath the floormat of a car left for days in the Virginia welt of summer. But the distraction that has taken on unparalleled nostalgia is Gash, our fictional goth-rock band. We had stage names. We wrote pages of song titles, penned haunting (no, really, truly haunting) lyrics, and a few melodies almost as sophisticated as Mary Had a Little Lamb. The point is: We were creative geniuses.
Receiving Bird by Bird was flattering (who doesn't want to be encouraged to do what they want to be encouraged to do?) and daunting. It felt like a gauntlet had been thrown. Write, the gauntlet said. I thought you said you wanted to write?
The conversation went something like this:
Matt: I found this book really helpful.
Me: Oh yes, I read bits and pieces of it in college.
Matt: It gives you ideas for how to get started!
Me: Indeed! Wow! Thank you so much. This is really awesome. This is just what I need. What a great gift! It will come in so handy as I flesh out this novel. Really. Wow! Thanks!
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Jesus. You got that book for Christmas, and here it is May, and I bet the point of this blog is that you're a lazy--and disingenuous--bastard and you haven't even opened the book yet."
Well, you're wrong!
It wasn't this past Christmas. It was three Christmases ago.
So, I've been reading it, nice and slow, a page at a time. And it's both enlightening and disturbing. The disturbing thing is that the book makes you realize how unoriginal all of your obsessive self-conscious thoughts are. Lamott talks about what it feels like to try to write.
What trying to write feels like to me is always one of two things: either the stabbing pain of inadequacy or the happy glow of conviction that I am the next great American writer. There is no in between. There is no "Oh, that's not too bad." Or, "Hmmm. This could be nice with a few tweaks." No. Instead, it's either "Fuckfuckfuck why do I do this I suck so bad at this what was I thinking and why does everything I write sound like a Cat Stevens lyric?" or it's "Oh, yes, Katie. Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Brava, you little minx!"
That's kind of what Lamott is saying, too. But she's much smarter than I (duh). She says you have to write anyway. You're supposed to write drivel. You're supposed to keep spewing. You're supposed to hate yourself most of the time.
She says:
You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.Brava, Anne Lamott, you little minx!
I will have a rough outline of my percolating novel done by Wednesday.
