This is for my nephew who is a prolific writer and kindly offered encouragement for me to blog more. Always be careful what you ask for. :)
Writing is a lot like being mentally ill. There are voices in your head and they all want you to document their existence, tell their story in such a way that other people can truly understand and relate to them.
And when you are working on one of those stories, all of the other ones start screaming, “My turn, tell my story!” So you close the document and try to find an excuse to take a nap. But you can’t because of all of the voices in your head.
That’s when I turn to Annie Lamott (who I just channeled) and the best book on writing that I’ve ever read, Bird by Bird.
When it’s a huge and daunting task and the deadline is already past (yep this sometimes happens), I first think of the advice Annie’s father offered her older brother as he lamented the impossibility of working on his report on birds (due the next day). “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” For me it’s been “cougar by cougar” . . . but I really don’t want to talk about it . . . even though Cosmo’s birthday is tomorrow; I’m trying to focus on how I’ve survived.
Anyway, the most important thing, Annie says, is to just start writing. Get the words out there even if they’re “let’s-pretend-she-says” crap. Allow yourself to have a crappy first draft. And then hope you don’t die before you can revise what you wrote and make it into something less crappy because somebody will find your crappy first draft and think you really write that way.
The thing that gets in our way, she says, is perfectionism. And she devoted a whole chapter to it. I think this is applicable to more things in our lives than just writing.
Here’s how the chapter begins:
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a “crappy” first draft.
I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.
Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force (these are words we are allowed to use in California). Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground-you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip. Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it’s going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath or suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.”
There’s some great stuff in between but this is how she ends it:
“Your day’s work might turn out to have been a mess. So what? Vonnegut said, “When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” So go ahead and make big scrawls and mistakes. Use up lots of paper. Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friend. What people somehow (inadvertently, I’m sure) forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here—and, by extension, what we’re supposed to be writing.”
Good advice I think for those of us plagued with the compulsion to apologize for our areas of untidiness, both mental and physical. I’m not very good at making messes yet but thank you for letting me share some writing advice while I work to improve.
Oh. And happy birthday, Cosmo.
