"hoping that the kindness will lead us past the blindness..."
anne lamott continues to amaze and make me laugh inappropriately in public.
keeping the voices quiet during the all-important shitty first draft:
"What I've learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First there's the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says primly, "Well, that's not very interesting, is it?" And there's the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and there's William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as bold and articulate as a houseplant; and so on. And there are also the dogs: let's not forget the dogs, the dogs in their pen who will surely hurtle and snarl their way out if you ever stop writing, because writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained.
Quieting these voices is at least half the battle I fight daily. But this is better than it used to be. It used to be 87 percent. Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who aren't there. I walk along defending myself to people, or exchanging repartee with them, or rationalizing my behavior, or seducing them with gossip, or pretending I'm on their TV talk show or whatever. I speed or run an aging yellow light or don't come to a complete stop, and one nanosecond later am explaining to imaginary cops exactly why I had to do what I did, or insisting that I did not in fact do it.
tl;dr: it is immensely gratifying to know that others share the same hilarious flavour of crazy. she's willing to expose it so i feel less awkward about being a total nutter at the writing desk.
i'm still walking home in the sunshine with headphones. it feels like i'm living in my neighbourhood now, as opposed to simply passing through on wheels. something about repeatedly measuring time with footsteps really does claim the space. the sun is still out, i get the warmth and light i have missed without danger of scorching. the freckles dusting my arms and nose are kind of cute, a fair trade for such serenity.
is it embarrassing to admit i've been revisiting old music? jann arden has such a voice when she's not wallowing in self-pity...heck, even when she is. one of her best was that duet with jackson browne, unloved.
so glad she got her happies with saved and not necessarily in a downhome biblical sense, either. she's saved herself in the simple sweetness of those first two verses.
back to work.
keeping the voices quiet during the all-important shitty first draft:
"What I've learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First there's the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says primly, "Well, that's not very interesting, is it?" And there's the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and there's William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as bold and articulate as a houseplant; and so on. And there are also the dogs: let's not forget the dogs, the dogs in their pen who will surely hurtle and snarl their way out if you ever stop writing, because writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained.
Quieting these voices is at least half the battle I fight daily. But this is better than it used to be. It used to be 87 percent. Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who aren't there. I walk along defending myself to people, or exchanging repartee with them, or rationalizing my behavior, or seducing them with gossip, or pretending I'm on their TV talk show or whatever. I speed or run an aging yellow light or don't come to a complete stop, and one nanosecond later am explaining to imaginary cops exactly why I had to do what I did, or insisting that I did not in fact do it.
tl;dr: it is immensely gratifying to know that others share the same hilarious flavour of crazy. she's willing to expose it so i feel less awkward about being a total nutter at the writing desk.
i'm still walking home in the sunshine with headphones. it feels like i'm living in my neighbourhood now, as opposed to simply passing through on wheels. something about repeatedly measuring time with footsteps really does claim the space. the sun is still out, i get the warmth and light i have missed without danger of scorching. the freckles dusting my arms and nose are kind of cute, a fair trade for such serenity.
is it embarrassing to admit i've been revisiting old music? jann arden has such a voice when she's not wallowing in self-pity...heck, even when she is. one of her best was that duet with jackson browne, unloved.
so glad she got her happies with saved and not necessarily in a downhome biblical sense, either. she's saved herself in the simple sweetness of those first two verses.
back to work.