Reading and Writing with Anne

Hello again after a long time away.

In my course for the semester, we're reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, some of us for the first time and some of us for the nth time.

I've always loved the way that I can hear Anne's voice burbling through the pages into my brain. It's as if I'm sitting across from her in a cafe, and she's filling the airspace with her wall-to-wall technicolor humor and anecdote.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be Anne -- I wanted to command that attention from readers, to have that kind of hold over an audience, to fill so much space with my mind (despite my, our, somewhat unassuming bodies). Now I just like reading, or re-reading her, and thinking about the rich and wild tumble of her metaphors as she rushes (like snowmelt) down the mountains of her own creating. Perhaps it's because I'm working on my own practices of mindfulness that I can now sit on the riverbank and simply let the wild water foam past me, instead of dipping my legs in, or feeling the urge to jump in with her and be swept away.

I do admire Anne's ability to let it all hang out -- to speak of herself and what she calls her mental illness with casual (offhand? blase'?) confidence. And I've identified with her immediate need to apologize for that move, to confess her self consciousness. Anne and I seem to want our readers to love us, warts and all, though we are convinced that we are unworthy because of the warts. We want, in other words, our readers to love us when we can't really love ourselves.

But I think I'm getting better at that -- loving myself, or at least being kind to myself -- and maybe that has something to do with the fact that I've stopped writing. Okay, no. I've stopped writing with purpose, or with the purpose of being published, and have accepted the role of teacher/coach instead. And though I have to fend off well-meaning acquaintances at cocktail parties who want me to tell them all about the great book of poetry I'm in the process of creating with lies about my poetry production (it's easier than listening to their well-meaning but aggressive pep talks), I'm beginning to be "fine" with the fact that I'm a teacher first, and a sometimes-writer second.

Maybe that falls under Anne's urgent message to us: write because we want to write, because we need to write, and not for the so-called "fame" or "fortune" that being "a published author" is supposed to bring us.