Shitty first drafts. Butt in chair. Just do it. You own everything that happened to you. You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart–your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it’s why you were born
–Anne Lamott
These words are posted on my desktop to remind me of why I write. When I sit down to write, I often ask myself, “What wants to be written?” Those thoughts and stories and ideas that I can’t get off my mind, the ones that nag me and want to be told, are the ones that need to be told.
Today, I didn’t finish the post I started for the best of reasons. Life got in the way. My daughter and her husband decided to come up for the afternoon. They both had the day off, it was too hot in their apartment, and they wanted to try out a new brewery in town. So instead of writing, I was talking and laughing and sharing beer and cheese and pickled vegetables at a long, sticky table in the cooling Berkeley evening.
Now that dinner–our favorite Zachary’s Chicago style pizza– is over, conversations have quieted down and everyone is moving toward bed, I have a few minutes to keep my writing streak going.
So I end this day with Anne Lamott’s words of wisdom.
I own everything that has happened to me, and it’s my work to tell it in my voice, from my perspective. That, after all, is all I have to offer.
I hope that, when I write it down, it won’t be merely a record of what has happened to me, but an honest expression of the joys, the mysteries, and the fears that are common to us as moms, as women, and as people. I want to write the story that resonates and encourages us as we journey together through life.
I’m probably not going to astonish you with great revelations–sometimes all I manage to write is a little anecdote–but I will try to be truthful about what I see and what I know.
So, here’s to those first drafts and those stories that tug at our hearts. I’ll have my butt back in the chair tomorrow.
After I started reading your copy of Julia Cameron’s “The Right to Write” (when I was at your house in July) I checked a copy out from the library so that I could finish it. Daniel started reading it and he was so inspired that he whisked it off to his brother’s house to show it to him. He forgot it there but decided he needed his own copy and so we went to Powell Books and picked up a used copy for 5 bucks. I told him that I really needed the library copy back; so he took the purchased copy to his brother’s and returned with the library copy. Daniel finished it right away, but I’ve been lingering, trying to instill some of the habits she suggests. The one that I’m trying to be faithful to is the morning pages – which I rarely do in the morning because that’s my Bible time. It has freed me up to ‘just write’ and not worry about the details.
Your daily blogs remind me of the importance of that.
Every day I find a nugget that causes me to think about being a mother -past and present. I look forward to seeing them in my inbox 🙂
Morning pages is a great habit to get into–it seems to uncover things you didn’t even know you were thinking about.