Anne Lamott's Three Chapters

With the way television and movies today are constantly changing from scene to scene, it is no wonder that our brains work the same way. We tend to think millions of things at once; each great thought flying away to be replaced by a not so great one before we have time to grab on. Sometimes what appears to be a simple everyday memory really is a mask of a hidden meaning on the part of the writer. Anne Lamott’s advice on how to deal with this problem is to write all of the thoughts flying through ones mind and then scour it later looking for something decent to continue on with. I have been doing this type of mindless writing for awhile and had a good laugh when the scramble was finally named a “shitty first draft”.

In “Shitty First Drafts” Lamott talks about the voices she hears in her head, from her parents to the emaciated German. She thought it was best to put all these voices into a jar and then turn the volume on them down real low; however, this technique wouldn’t work for me because I usually struggle with my own thoughts and not others. I usually think about trying to write about some universally important topic or try to write like someone else. Lamott’s friend suggests shooting the voices in the jar in the head, but no writing would get done if I did that.

When I was little I was always writing stories and poems and thought that I was writing masterpieces; sadly, when I look back on my masterpieces they serve for little more than a laugh. Now when I write it takes only a few minutes for me to read through what I just finished and realize its crap. It was comforting to know that even professional writers feel anxiety when they sit down at the typewriter. By describing her own writing dilemmas, Lamott took away a little of my own panic when I sat down at my computer this afternoon.

My childhood stories also tended to be lacking because I was writing about things I wasn’t involved in (the Titanic and the Holocaust for anyone wondering). In “School Lunches” Lamott has every petrified writer begin by talking about school lunches. Why? Because we all know about school lunch and have some memory. Lamott stresses that the important thing with writing is to write about what you know. From personal experience, I can say that this is very worthwhile advice. This small advice was only a small part of the wonderful and colorful lessons Anne Lamott offered in the three chapters on writing.