I don’t often read books about Being a Writer. Because you know I’m above all that, ha ha ha. At least I used to think I was. But Bird by Bird is famous among writers, a book that everyone at writer’s group has heard of. Of course I didn’t rush out to read it. Because I’m above all that remember?
They say you have to “read deeply in the genre … ” I do that. And read the classics. Also I write in a journal. And yet still, I felt like, as a writer, sometimes I am drifting out to sea. Great ideas aren’t coming. The book that wasn’t quite finished, and the one that wasn’t quite good enough, and the really good one that was lost in the garage, those books have stayed not done, and have haunted me.
But during the COVID times, I found that I really, really needed good books to read. And I decided to read books that were recommended, and just give them a chance, and if they were not special to *me*, I would put them quietly back in the library without admitting that I hadn’t finished them. But if they were special, I’d cherish them. About that time I remembered that…
A half dozen people told me to read BIRD BY BIRD
BIRD BY BIRD is an unusual book about being a writer. It’s not about story structure, or character, or finding an agent, though Lamott mentions those topics. It’s about the psychic experience of being a writer, from the beginning to the end. And Lamott is one of the most compassionate teachers I’ve come across. I can’t imagine what her workshop would be like, because her book is so nurturing just in black and white ink on pages. The actual person, why, she must be a like your fairy god mother, but with a darker sense of humor.
Why do I feel this way? Because she answers questions that have hounded me for years, for decades. I find out: That guy with whom I traded manuscripts for beta reads, and I read and critiqued his whole book, and he just read my first chapter and said “it needs a lot of work. I’m not reading the rest until you fix it,” that guy wasn’t confused about how to help. He was a bad person, actually.
That “Friend” Who Said “It Needs Work” … Was Mean”
“Destroying your work gave him real pleasure,” says Lamott. “Get rid of this person immediately.”
I pat myself on the back, because of course that is what I did. I wrote a concise and rather pointed letter stating that he was a creep. But until Lamott put this down, I didn’t know that this guy was a type. I thought I might be the only person who had been ripped off this way.
She tells us when we have writer’s block, to live as if we were dying. To give ourselves permission to just write 300 words and then go to the beach. She says “write shitty first drafts.” And also:
“Give Yourself Permission to be Mediocre”
Wow. Now that’s revolutionary. I wish I’d know that a while ago, before I spent literally years berating myself for the lack of an idea of sufficient brilliance. Stop beating yourself, I hear Lamott saying. It won’t make you more than you were, and it hurts.
Affirmation of your worth here as a writer is all over the place in this book. Just ’cause you write! “Everything you need is in your head and memories, in all that your senses provide, in all that you’ve seen and thought and absorbed,” she says. To all of us. Indeed, after reading this book I’ve realized that my love for the world is the main motivation for my writing: I just want to save all of it. Every inch of it. And every second! But that’s not possible.
Lamott writes about being a girl, and being 50 pounds in 7th grade (and as a teacher I know how impossibly little that is) and I read and wonder. What? You weren’t planning to be perfect? You knew already that was impossible? How … highly developed.
When I was in 7th grade, I was still planning on a perfect life. I didn’t realize, it, I wouldn’t have called it that, but I thought if I could just get the right clothes … and the right friends … and if Tony L. would just decide he liked me back … then that would be all I would ask. Life would be perfect, and by extension so would I.
Reading Lamott makes me realize that all this crazy glamourism along with too much reading of Cosmopolitan magazine. I knew Cosmo was full of wish fulfilling fantasy and yet kept reading anyway. It just kept me confused. It kept me from finding out who I was. And from stretching myself, from writing seriously, for many years.
I Wish I Had Met Lamott in the 80’s
But it was impossible. Not just because of my arrogance and the fact that I didn’t think I needed a book on how to handle the emotional overloads of being a writer. Even though arguably, that was the biggest problem I faced. It was impossible because Bird by Bird wasn’t out yet. The book didn’t come out until 1994, and by then, I had at least gotten into therapy. It took another quarter century for my arrogance to wind down enough to read BIRD BY BIRD.
“In the beginning,” Lamott tells us, “when you’re first starting out, there are a million reasons not to write … “
And I go back to my own writer’s beginning. When I first faced that question: should I write? And if so, how do you do that?
I am sitting at the table reading an article in a horse magazine. The idea pops up. “I could write an article for this magazine.” I try to organize my article idea. Soon I have a handwritten page on a lined paper tablet with black ink, arrows and blocks of text all confused. “I don’t quite know how to do this,” I realize. And give up. I have a Brother typewriter and paper (this is so long ago that that’s what we used; it’s so long ago that people were still not sure how you got AIDS) but when you don’t know how to be a writer, you can’t do it, even if you have the tools. Lamott was so fortunate, I realize, because her father, a novelist, taught her so much.
My Own Writer’s Beginnings
I close my eyes and remember the apartment I lived in when I was 19. I remember the linoleum on the kitchen floor, the cheap brown particleboard cupboards, the tiny square kitchen with a card table in it where we ate. The yellow incandescent lights in the round hanging light fixture. I remember the dull tan curtains and the indistinct gold light of the afternoon sun coming in from the west.
At the same card table, I remember starting a story about St. Paul, up in heaven, working in some file room called the Prayers Answering Department, and finding that someone’s prayer hadn’t been properly addressed, and making a plan to go down to earth and figure out what was going wrong. And then looking at the story with the greatest frustration and realizing I had no idea what St. Paul could do about the problem. And quitting that story, very frustrated.
I was blocked even then, at age 19. When I see this, I begin to feel really irritated by my own lack of self awareness.
Here I thought I was the coolest of the cool, the person who, if she could just get the right clothes, the right guy, and all, would be a Perfect Human Being, and as it turns out I knew nothing whatsoever about how to be a person, a writer, and almost as little about how to live. I pull my face out of the book for a second, remember, shake my head in dismay, and then read on. Like me, Lamott became a mother. And it doesn’t go well, she says.
Lamott Struggles with Motherhood and Prevails
She sometimes is in despair: “Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world’s worst roommate, like having Janis Joplin with a hangover and PMS come to stay with you … ” she notes.
Californian women of the era had a hard time with the strictures of motherhood and children. But somehow we prevailed. My mother told me that babies are impossible, if you have one, “you’re going to be sorry.” Especially after the third one, she told me “Three kids, that’s pretty much impossible, you know.”
Lamott writes about her son, Sam, with such love that I am shocked. After all, when I was little, kids were just so unwanted. I was the only one of my friends who wanted to have kids.
Lamott says kids are cool, writing is cool, you are cool. She is the antithesis of the world I was raised in. The antidote. The polar opposite of the California mentality of our parents. I think about the book, on its way back to the library tomorrow. I may have to buy my own copy. Because Lamott is someone you want to have around, even in book form, for all those days when the voices from your childhood try to bring you down. At least I want to have her around, and I bet, if you’re a writer, you do too.
