Anne Lamott: Taking it Bird by Bird Take a lesson from this author who believes that “perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor . . INTERVIEW BY CARROLL LACHNIT he best writing often springs from the most turbulent lives. In the past ten years, Anne Lamott has pulled herself out of drug and alcohol addiction, experienced a profound religious con- version and become a single mother. And by writing almost every day— even when drinking or walking the floor as a self-described “hormonally challenged” mother with a colicky son—she's been able to write and pub- lish four novels and two books of nonfiction. Lamott’ first nonfiction book was Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year, published in 1993. It made the bestseller lists with its funny, touching account of what it’s really like to be the single mother of a newborn—"the dark side, the Seventh- ‘Seat-with-milky-bras part,” as she puts it Her second nonfiction book, pub- lished in 1994, was about her craft Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing cand Life takes its title from advice that Lamott’s father, writer Kenneth Lamott, gave Anne's 10-year-old brother as he ‘crumbled under the weight of a school report on the avian world: “Bird by bird, buddy,” Lamott's father said. “Just take it bird by bird.” Bird by Bird took off, selling twice as well as Operating Instructions did in hardcover. More than 80,000 hardcover copies have been sold, and Doubleday reports gross paperback sales of another 80,000-plus copies. The book made the Publishers Weekly, San Fran: cisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times bestseller mong others Given the positive changes in La 30 WRITER'S DIGEST just let yourself write whatever comes out.” mott’s life and the successes she's had with her last two books, other writers ‘might think that she glides serenely to her desk each morning, ready to work. Confidence stoked by success, spirit shining with sobriety, and soul gli mering with her deep love of God, Lamott puts her fingers to the keys and feels the words flowing Not quite. In Bird by Bird, she compares writing to climbing a mirror-smooth glacier: It’s hard to get your footing, and your fingertips get all red and f zen and torn up. Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk ike your sickest, most secretive relatives, and they pull up chairs in a semicir. le around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back, What Ido at this point, as the panie mounts and the jungle drums begin beating andI realize that the well has run dry and that my future is behind me and T'm going to have to get a job only Tm completely unemployable, is to stop .. (0) just sit there for a min- ute, breathing slowly, quietly. I let my mind wander. After a moment, 1 may notice that I'm trying to decide whether or not I am too old for orthodontia It's part of Lamott’s mission to let us know that successful writers are just as terrified and crazy as we are. In the writing classes she teaches at a book- store near her home in San Rafael, Cali- fornia, andl at the Squaw Valley Commu nity of Writers summer workshops, she shares her experiences of the writer's life to help others overcome the fears and fantasies that get in the way of their work. On a winter morning at her tiny house, 42-year-old Lamott rustled up coffee and fat-free doughnuts, fed her pet finches, and scolded her dog for scarfing up the dozen cupcakes Lamott and her son, Sam, had made for school ‘Then she sat at her kitchen table and talked about her life and work Writing, she says, is about paying attention and telling the truth. Even when she was drinking, Lamott did both, often turning her observations on herself. In her 1986 novel Rosie, Lamott describes the drinking of Rosie’s mother, a woman who fears she's an alcoholic and is trying to hide it from a new boyfriend. She was that woman, Lamott admits. Elizabeth went to the kitchen. ‘There was a half-empty bottle of 8B in the cupboard, from which ‘she poured two stiff shots (one was an inch stiffer until she took a big bracing sip). She carried them to the living room, sipping on hers as, soon as he could see her; the sip legitimized the whiskey on her breath. Elizabeth was up to many tricks these days. For instance, now there was always a pint of whiskey in the study closet in case she needed one or two supplemen- tary sips, or in case James was not there for the night. ... This second bottle business was just a phase, but her secret frightened her: a furtive aristocrat who pushed wrapped empty pints down deep in the garbage can. She was drinking too much in the terror that James would find out how much she needed to drink. Warren's Dicest: You had quite a bit of insight into what you were doing, even though you were still inking when you wrote that, Anxe Laworr: I was drinking a great deal more than Elizabeth was, actually. | was drinking a fifth a day of whiskey or vodka or whatever. I was very fright- ened by what was happening. So I was writing from the center of my alcohol ism. I knew what it was like to keep a lot of secrets, to try to get a big glug down before someone comes into the room, to brush your teeth a lot, and to worry that the booze in the glass is still moving when a person comes into the room. WD: You weren't in denial about ing an alcoholic? Lawtorr: knew I was an alcoholic when I was about 23. I'd first gotten drunk with a bunch of girls when I was 14. We were making spoolie-oolies, which were red wine and 7-U (ot Schweppes for those with a more sophisti- cated palate). We all had a number of drinks, and they stopped drinking after about three. Why? They were drunk and they didn’t want to get any drunker. And I Just wanted to get drunker. WD: And as you got older, you didn’t want to stop drinl Lawort: No. I didn't believe I'd ever work ‘again creatively. I fell for the myth that my creativity sprang from my madness, from my darkness and the tortured side of my soul. I didn’t believe I'd ever have a social life, have fun again, have sex again. But I got to the point where either L would get sober or I would die. I felt like a part of me was dying, I couldn't ‘wake up one more morning feeling so scared and ashamed and sick and hope- less. And so I called a friend who had been sober ten years and I said, “I quit.” ‘And he said “Hallelujah.” That was July 7, 1986. Tve been tempted only a few times since. I know if I start drinking again, TI lose Sam. This disease is fatal and progressive, and my chemotherapy is, not to drink, one day at a time, and to spend time with other recovering alco- holics and talk about it.I take my che- motherapy almost every single day: prayer and meditation. WD: Does writing work for you as meditation? Laworr: No. Writing doesn’t soothe me particularly, although I said in Bird by Bird that when I've gotten my work done, Ihave a much, much better day. 1 find writing really very stressful. When you get through that first awful half hour, it does bring you to that place of one-pointedness and mindfulness. Maybe it’s different for other writers, but for me, I'l get a good half hour going and I'l feel jazzed and attentive at the same time, but then it all starts, up again. WD: The sick, secret relatives arrive? Lasorn Yes, the voices and the decisions that have to be made about orthodonti WD: When you write you put all your fears, your weaknesses, right out there, front and center. In Birt by Bird, you said you were tortured by jealousy of other writers. You called yourself “The Leona Helmsley of jealousy.” Do you encourage other writers to be that honest? Laaorr. I wouldn't necessarily encour- age everyone to write like I do. I write in a very confessional way, because to me it’s so exciting and fun. There's noth: ing funnier on earth than our human. ness and our monkeyness. There's noth- ing more touching, and it's what llove to ‘come upon when I'm reading; someone who's gotten really down and dirty, and they're taking the dross of life and doing alchemy, turning it into magic, tender- JUNE 1996. 31WRITING WITH ANNE LAMOTT ness and compassion and hilarity. So 1 tell my students that if they really love something, pay attention to it. Try to write something that they would love to come upon. WD: You say in Bird by Bird that the two ‘most helpful things you can tell people about writing are the short assignment and the shitty first draft. Why are they so important? Lavorr: I think a lot of us were raised with—besides a feeling of self-loath- ing—with feelings of grandiosity. We ‘want 10 do this enormous stuff, specta: cle and epic, stuff that Spielberg might be able to pull off, maybe. We don't want to do some tiny little thing, some tiny litle shard in the mosaic. We want to do the whole panoramic portrait and So it overwhelms us, and it totally thwarts us. The only way to approach it is by really, really small bits. That's why tell students to buy a 1” picture frame, and bite off only as much as can be seen in that frame. And all you do is squint at the movie playing in your head and you try to capture that on paper. It just, makes things so manageable and safe and unthreatening. Why I encourage really, really avful first drafts is because this is how every single real writer I know writes My students have this illusion that good writers sit there as if they're just tak- ing dictation and it’s coming out fully formed. Well, {really believe that perfec. tionism is the voice of the oppressor and the enemy of the people. It makes it impossible for us to-get anything down, AS soon as you can break through that need, and just let yourself write what- ever comes out, knowing that no one’s, reading over your shoulder, knowing you can go through and start to shape, ‘cut stuff out, save it for other projects, and if you can also get someone to maybe help you winnow out what the real structure and the real story is that, you're attempting to capture, then you're home free. Sort of. WD: Youalso said you've managed to get writing done every day of your adult life, Do you still do that? Lavorr: Today for example, I didn't get any writing done, But 1 always say to uddents, if you write 300 words a day, taking time out for holidays and PMS, at the end of the year, you might have 250 pages. That's a novel. And so [try to sit down five days a week. | try to budget, several hours, I just try to get a little Dit of work done. Short assignment by short assignment. Shitty first draft by shitty first draft. Bird by bird, [ry to get some work done, 32 weiees “Writing is about tell- ing the truth and paying attention. I love the way people talk, lover- hear things. And I carry index cards with me.” Sometimes when I'm done with a specific project, and I'm kind of disman- ting the old machine, and I don’t know what the form of the next one is going to be, I might still have some images or vignettes or moments that I can see rather clearly, as a movie playing in my head. Its a pure kind of writing. You're just writing, waiting for the material to tell you what it’s about and where it wants you to take it.I tell my students to sit down and start writing about their childhood. I love Flannery O'Connor's line that anyone who has survived child hood has enough material to write about, for the rest of their life. I say just write down everything you can remember about your father, your mother, your school. If you can't get the memory, think of holidays. Those landmarks often help you find your way back. So I'll just start writing memories, short assignments and fragments, trusting they will reveal their bigger picture to me if I just suit up and show up and do what I have to do to quiet my mind so 1 can hear them better. Tl think about a character and 1 ask myself: “Who is this person? How does she walk, how does she stand, what would be in her pockets if we asked her to empty them? What would be in her purse, who is her best friend, what is most at stake for her? What does she love most and, ergo, where is she most vulnerable? Who oes she like to think she is?" Then I begin to know her, And it table with the dolls at teatime and all the dolls want to start talking. WD: You make wonderful use of similes and metaphors. You wrote about hiding from the world like a spiny blenny in a cave. You described your mental ill nesses as being secretive relatives with their weird coppery breath. Is there a way you go hunting for those images? Lavorr: I pay attention, Writing is about telling the truth and paying attention, in a sort of Buddhist way. Tove the way people talk, and { overhear things. And I carry index cards with me. Tthink so many people who want to be writers are so afraid to say that they're writers or that they're writing, because somebody will come along and ask, “Published?” And so they don’t ‘arty a notepad, or index cards. And a lot of these images come to them—they see things watching nature shows or they might be at the salt marsh and see an egret do something just never seen before—and because they're not con- sciously filling up or giving themselves permission to be in that stage of the pro- cess, it escapes them. Without sounding too California, I give myself permission to think of myself as a writer and see the world through writerly eyes. also know that I had to unleam everything I leared as a child in order tobe a writer. WD: What do you mean by that? Laworr. [was taught that you don't waste paper. You have to waste tons and tons of paper if you're going to be a writer. I ‘was taught to try not to make mistakes. Good writing stems from mistakes. I was taught that you don’t waste time and stare off into space. If you were a kid staring off into space for even five minutes, an adult always showed up to say, “What are you doing? Don't you have something to do? Is your room clean’ You don’t have any homework?” And so you get used to not staring off into space, Now I stare off into space. That's how my images come. Isit there, empty myself, and stare into the middle dis- tance like a cat, and these images and metaphors and ‘smiles and ideas float into my head like goldfish. I start to watch them and they float around and I watch where they go. I get thoughts that anonwriter could only call spacing ‘out—neurotransmitters firing wildly ‘out of sequence. 1 pay attention and I start to smile, When I smile, I know I'm thinking of something interesting, or that’s shapable. It's the clay that a writer pulls out of a river and puts on a table before her and starts to play with. 8D Carroll Lachnit’s frst book, Murder in Brief (Berkley Prime Crime), 69H was published in June »” 1995 and launched the Hannah Barlow mystery series. The second book in the series, A Blessed Death, is expected this month.