I Guess I'll Do the Book, Lamott Won't Let me Off the Hook

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 29^th because I thought that date did not exist.  Damn you Leap Year.”

Blessi "Sitting Pretty" in Equus Magazine

Equus Magazine published my article "Sitting Pretty" about Blessi and his favorite cat Mittens in their September edition.  Equus just re-published the article on-line.  You can read it  at:

https://equusmagazine.com/horse-world/prettykitty

How an Invisible Rabbit can help you write about a pony

London 1975.  Prince of Wales Theater.  Jimmy Stewart, playing Elwood P. Dowd, and the other cast members enchant me into seeing a six-foot, eight-inch tall pooka or rabbit named Harvey on stage.  I have loved the magic of theater ever since I could afford the price of a ticket.  Some highlights of my appreciation of the theatrical arts include Kevin Spacey (this was a decade before his alleged sexual harassment history hit the news) as Richard III at the Old Vic in London and Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson as mother and daughter in “Lady Windermere’s Fan” at the Theater Royal Haymarket.  My enjoyment of theater is not dependent on movie stars in leading roles.  I adore community productions of “Our Town” and “Tony N Tina’s Wedding.” 

My only attempt behind the proscenium was when another woman and I (students of non-traditional age in a two-week college program in Greece) read the roles of Euelpides and Pisthetairos in Aristophanes’s “The Birds,” a farcical, satirical fantasy written in Greece around 400 BC.   Our version of the play was staged on the Aegean beach on the Greek island of Kos.  I suspect we won the roles because the professors thought our maturity would enable us to handle lines such as “chickenshitter,” “tickling his testicles,” and “with cocks erect.”  We couldn’t, but after a glass of ouzo we were better at pretending. 

         My experience with writing plays is zilch.  So I was perplexed by a class assignment on drama.  What possible use could I have for learning how to write plays?  Then it struck me like a falling medium-arc iodide spotlight.  Since I was having problems writing the scene of Quentin sneaking Algonquin the pony into the boys' bedroom to cheer up his brother Archie who had the measles, I could re-write the pony in the elevator event as a mini-play.  The techniques used in drama should help me to better visualize what was happening.  I am adapting Anne Lamott’s suggestion in Bird By Bird of using a different method of conveying character information, in my case a play instead of a letter, to free me “from the tyranny of perfectionism.”

I read Burroway's Imaginative Writing to determining which techniques of the theater might help me in this restaging.  Since my miniplay needs to occur on a stage, I choose to set it in Archie and Quentin’s bedroom, which requires reviewing floor plans for the White House in 1903.  The set designer needs to sketch the location of windows and doors, style of bedroom furniture, source of light, appropriate props, etc., to help establish mood and period.  Translating the plot into dramatic terms means that the inciting incident is the quarantining of Quentin and Archie to their beds because of measles; exposition can be delivered by two servants explaining the boys’ dissatisfaction with the quarantine; and the point of attack comes when Archie is denied a visit with his pony.

Understanding the design of the set is important so that I can block the movement of the actors.  Does Archie get out of bed to open the curtains?   From where does the pony enter?  As part of the stage directions, I can describe any critical actions that Archie or Quentin perform while reciting a bit of dialog.  Does Archie jump out of bed to greet Algonquin?  Does he stay in bed and let the pony approach him?

A consideration of nonverbal sounds is necessary.  What diegetic sounds, sounds that originate from objects present on the stage, need to be considered?  An important one is the sound of the elevator which could be heard because it abuts the back of the boys’ bedroom.  Other diegetic sounds would be the clip clop of pony hooves down the hall and the opening or closing of drapes.  I choose not to use any nondiegetic sounds until I rewrite the play as a musical.

Burroway presents some “things to remember” about play dialog that I find useful in writing fiction or non-fiction.  Introduce the conflict early so I need to ensure that Archie asks to visit Algonquin close to the beginning of the play.  Dialogue needs to be written so that the actors can speak it in a natural way.  Silences can be used to introduce tension.  The length of the dialog spoken by characters can be varied to retain the listener’s interest.

I sent the pony play to my sister.  Her reactions helped me evaluate what format works well in telling different parts of the story.  Exposition about the measles epidemic slows down the play format but can work well as a written introduction to non-fiction.  The elevator scene would work best in a filmed format since the director can control the frame, angle, close ups, and points of view to focus on the interactions between person and pony.  The mother-sons-pony scene can work well in film, drama, or non-fiction if the format captures the truth of the moment.   
 My sister, who has met my Icelandic horse (remember Algonquin is half Icelandic), identifies the truth of the scene as “Blessi always finds the treats!!!”  Writing the pony in the elevator scene as a play better enabled me to get to the truth of the event.  As Donald Barthelme says, “Truth ... is a hard apple, whether one is throwing it or catching it.”  Apples—and cookies--make it easier to catch the truth of a pony.