On
a recent “Tonight Show” episode, Steve Martin sang a brilliant, bathetic ballad
during his mock pre-show breakdown:
I used up all
my stories, when I was in my 40s,
but now I’m 52
years old and I don’t want to do this show.
I got no more
material, I don’t want to do this show[1].
I got plenty
to promote but I got no anecdotes.
I guess I’ll
do the show.
Lamott’s
last chapters in Bird by Bird seem to have the same leitmotif.
With the exception of the memorial to her friends’ dying baby Brice, I
think she ran out of anecdotes to illuminate those chapters—chapters she was
probably contractually obligated to produce.
Come on! Getting beat up by a
gorilla and being in pain because he doesn’t call. Small penis jokes. This is not the luminous prose and sharp wit
I came to expect from Lamott in the first part of the book.
Here
are the few points that I gleaned from these final chapters. Writing can be a present to somebody you love
and respect. If you write, as Lamott
suggests, as “carefully and soulfully” as you can, your results become a gift
to the living and a legacy to the dead. My story about my father’s long decline was
not written for my father but for my mother, who loved and supported him
through his protracted final illness. The
story was cathartic for me to write. I
dealt with issues that I had never fully resolved. As Lamott says, we need to let the truth out
of the closet: “Your anger and damage
and grief are the way to the truth.” As writers we can only get at our personal
truth by developing our own voice, not emulating the New York Best Selling
author of the month.
Publication
for a writer is like winning an Olympic gold medal for an athlete. It can be a lifetime goal but, according to
Lamott, not one that many writers are going to achieve via best selling books
or articles published in national magazines.
The majority of writers should continue to write but learn to find
“solace and direction and wisdom and truth and pride” in the act of writing
itself. I find Lamott fatalistic and limiting
in her advice in this area. Writer’s Market lists major publishers, well known literary agencies, and national
magazines. But you also find listings
for specialty interests from dogs, to rock climbing, to auto restoration and
for trade journals specializing in business travel, Canadian mining, and pool
products. If you use your imagination,
you can find outlets here for creative non-fiction and even fiction. Non-profits and local publications are always
looking for material they can publish in exchange for author visibility and
publicity. I started off writing cute
pony stories for the newsletters of the horse clubs to which I belonged. I moved up to writing for the United States Icelandic Horse Congress
Quarterly. I recently sold two
article to Equus magazine. My article on “Detecting Icelandic Horse
Origins” was published online by the Norlandshest organization in Norway and
then cited as an original source in the Wikipedia article on the Icelandic
horse. If you publish quality pieces,
you can build a large audience by blogging.
Julie Powell ended up with a best seller and a movie deal through her
blog “The Julie/Julia Project” about cooking with Julia Child’s recipes. Find an area for which you
have a passion. Write “truthfully” about
it. You will find an audience.
If
I consider the entire Bird by Bird, I
find multiple passages inspirational. Lamott’s
injunction to begin a writing project by treating it as a bird by bird exercise
(or filling a one-inch picture frame) is a brilliant way to enable us beginning
writers to get started. Telling us about
“shitty first drafts” takes some of the dread out of putting those first words
down on a page knowing they will probably be crap. Comparing character development to a Polaroid
that gradually reveals itself over time encourages us to listen to our
characters and let the plot grow out of the characters. Lamott challenges us to return to a
child-like state when we closely observed people and events and felt
deeply. We can find joy in writing.
When Lamott turned 61, she made a list of every single
thing she knows. As she advises in Item
6, “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.” So I am taking Lamott’s advice. I hear Steve Martin singing: “You’re 62 years
old. You got some pony anecdotes. I guess
you’ll do the book. Lamott won’t let you
off the hook.”
[1]
A leapling is a person born on February 29th. As a leapling joke, Steve Martin swears “I only agreed to come on this show on
February 29th because I thought that date did not exist. Damn you Leap Year.”
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