>Anne Lamott: Inspiration in the Flesh

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When I first started writing, Anne Lamott’s words fueled me.

In Bird by Bird, she freed me to write “shitty first drafts” by airing out the dirty secret that all good writers have to write them to get good second drafts and terrific third drafts.

In Operating Instructions, her raw yet poetic observations about the little details that make up motherhood inspired me to see and record the beauty of a snotty, red-faced tantrum. She gave me the courage to capture it all, the highs and the lows, the joys and the misery, with unflinching honesty. Every time one of my kids delays bedtime with a request for a glass of water, her description of trudging back up the stairs, like a dinosaur dragging his giant tail pops in my brain and makes me smile.

When I saw that Anne Lamott was coming to the Chicago suburbs to promote the paperback edition of her latest novel, Imperfect Birds, I was as giddy as a little kid counting down to Easter. I couldn’t believe that I was going to have a chance to be in the same room with the woman who had been inspiring me for so long, to hear her speak and answer questions.

At first I was almost surprised to see how small she seemed, standing up at the podium like a tiny Medusa with a head full of dreadlocks. But then a hand went up in the semi-circle of folding chairs, and someone in the crowd of eclectic fans asked a question, and the conversation flowed fast and furious, electric with inspiration. She spoke about:

Beauty and Her Mother’s Flawed Expectations
“My life was changed irrevocably when I was 16 and Ms Magazine came out. It was a one-way ticket to self-loathing. I was marinaded in my mother’s anxiety that only men mattered.”
“To refuse to diet is an act of generosity to all women. It’s a refusal to judge yourself.”

Raising Strong Girls
“The stakes are high with our girls and that’s why we need to be their lighthouses. We need to show them that the respect they are so desperate for can only come from within.”

Mining Her Pain to Write
“I am the happiest person I know yet over a third of my life really threw me. It was scary, and it was hard, and it hurt. I drank myself pretty close to death. I loved cocaine and meth and pills and it was awful, so painful. … It feels awful to get that burnt, charredness off of us, but only through writing can we do that.”

Hating Being a Guest on The Colbert Report
“Being on Colbert was the most stressful thing I’ve ever done and I would never do it again. I worried about it for two weeks. I tried to tell myself that I was not here to be fodder for an entertainment show, that I was a precious city on a hill, a beautiful daughter of god, but I still worried myself sick.”

We could have talked all night, asking questions about writing, motherhood and faith, but the time went too fast. She closed by reading excepts from her novels, filled with deeply human characters who fart, curse, love and hate. I loved hearing her read her words, and watching her smile as she introduced her characters like old friends you can’t help but love.