Posts Tagged ‘Anne Lamott’
Cindy on August 12th, 2009
Irrespective of what she reads, though, when she goes back to sit before the computer, there is the same stubborn emptiness, the same locked door.” — Elizabeth Berg, Home Safe
As soon as I hit the “Publish” tab, I started worrying about last week’s blog post. Not that I regretted exposing my family’s elder-care crises. I know many of you can relate to or sympathize with the heartache of witnessing the decline of aging parents. But later in the post, I got a little too gloomy about journalism, blogging, and writing careers.
I didn’t mean to discourage anyone.
This site was originally designed to keep in touch with my newspaper column readers, and over the years it also morphed into a blog for my writing workshop students. I usually don’t give writing “advice” — but I try to offer some insight on the writing life. Most of my students tell me that getting published seems like a mysterious, impossible thing that other people do. So, I make a point of reminding them that that’s not the case at all. Published writers are ordinary people who grow tomatoes, burn casseroles, gripe about politics, miss their kids when they move out, and wish someone else would wash their cars. People like me.
Until recently, though, I’ve rarely said much about the lonely hours of isolation, the frightening abyss of writer’s block, the times I’ve been annoyed at editors and baffled by agents, or the times I’ve wondered if I’m just wasting time. I’ve avoided discussing all that because I believe my role is to encourage, inspire, and excite new writers — to remind you that your dreams of publication are not out of reach. And yet, with so many newspapers and magazines folding lately, and with the book publishing industry in a major crisis, too, I think it’s misleading to suggest that being a writer is loads of fun right now. When the only ones signing fabulous book deals are loons like Sarah Palin (who can’t even deliver a coherent speech), well, to paraphrase Anne Lamott, you too might be inclined to get “down on your hands and knees and drink gin straight from the cat’s dish.”
Regardless, last week I wondered if it was wrong to broadcast how pessimistic I’d been feeling about the future of publishing. And wasn’t it a bit unfair or mean-spirited to announce that “the magic just isn’t there for me” in blogging — especially when I know that many of you take pride in your blogs? So, I almost went back to delete that downer of a paragraph from last week’s post.
But then I finished Elizabeth Berg’s sweet new novel, Home Safe, and I changed my mind.
In Home Safe, middle-aged novelist Helen Ames is coping with the loss of her husband and her father — and facing a newly emptied nest. Despite all the free time she has, Helen is impossibly blocked, unable to do the writing that has always fulfilled and saved her. I won’t spoil the entire plot for you, in case you’d like to read the novel, but I suspect that Elizabeth Berg herself has endured some of her main character’s career angst. What writer hasn’t?
Like the fictional Helen Ames, I’ve often thought about throwing my drafts in the trash compactor and applying for a “real job” in retail. (I’ve seriously wondered if I’m better suited to a gig at an Eileen Fisher boutique or a cozy independent bookshop with a resident cat.) But along the way, Helen reluctantly tries teaching a writing class, and ultimately learns that she is lifted by coaching others. Just as I’ve been lifted by every hopeful student who’s had the courage to share his or her stories in my classes.
Reading Home Safe, I felt at times as if Berg were holding a mirror to my own conscience. But the real gift in this novel was the permission it gave me to admit aloud that I do get burned-out and discouraged; that no matter how much I’ve achieved, I’m not immune to doubt and insecurity.
Burnout, discouragement, doubt, and insecurity are inexorably chained to the writing life — yet they often precede a second wind or a second act. If you’re in it for the long run, there’s no way you’ll fully appreciate the thrill of seeing your byline under a magazine article or your name on the cover of a book until you’ve battled these demons and gremlins. I wouldn’t be honest, or fair, if I didn’t share that with you too. -- Cindy La Ferle
Cindy on May 17th, 2009
I’m probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac.” — Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions
If you could go back and relive your early years of motherhood, what would you do differently? Do you wish you’d used cloth diapers instead of disposables? Made your own baby food? Or stayed home from work a year or two longer? If I had to do it over again, I’d wipe out the myth of The Perfect Mom.
Like June Cleaver’s apron strings, the myth of The Perfect Mom won’t unravel easily. But as a woman with more than two decades of maternal experience, I’m here to tell you that we need to stuff this exhausted fairy tale in the place where all the dirty disposal diapers go.
I only wish I’d realized it sooner.
My husband and I were married five years when my ob-gyn’s office called with the happy news: I was pregnant with our first and only child. While I knew from the getgo that I wasn’t perfect-mom material, I wanted to get everything right. Which is another way of saying I worried too much.
I worried about my Lamaze breathing techniques. I worried about the quality of my prenatal vitamins. And while waiting in my ob-gyn’s office, I’d manage to find every magazine article listing the awful things that could happen to your unborn baby if, say, you accidentally swallowed your eye shadow, consumed bacon fat, or picked up a weird rash at the community pool.
Of course, the pursuit of mommy perfection got even more intense after my son was born. And so did the worrying. Was my baby sleeping too much or too little? Was his relentless wiggling a symptom of hyperactivity or something more sinister? Had I stopped breastfeeding too soon? Worse yet, by the time the kid was in kindergarten, I’d already started berating myself for providing store-bought cupcakes in lieu of homemade treats.
Seriously, I did loosen up by the time my son was in Cub Scouts, and realized my parenting skills were no worse (or better) than the other moms I’d met. Regardless, it shouldn’t have taken a vast library of childcare guides to get me through the early years — but there you have it. What I needed more than anything was a permission slip to be human.
I also wish Anne Lamott had written her memoir, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year, eight years sooner. Her candid recollections of early parenthood have relieved thousands of nervous first-time mothers.
âOne of the worst things about being a parent, for me,â Lamott wrote, âis the self-discovery, the being face to face with one’s secret insanity and brokenness.â Finishing Lamott’s book, I sobbed with the realization that I hadn’t been alone in my fear of being an imperfect mom â or being a mom, period.
Even today, the cultural pressures on women never seem to let up. Whether we stay home with our kids or work in an office across town, we’re expected to perform flawless balancing acts in the circus of family living.
Instead we ought to be reminded that there is no foolproof, one-size-fits-all method of parenting. Motherhood is something we learn as we go along, and we’re bound to fall short from time to time. Meanwhile, I wish we’d all stop comparing ourselves to other moms, including the fictional Donna Reed “role models” embedded in our collective psyche. Parenthood is no place for card-carrying perfectionists.
Ever since the first family set up housekeeping in a fire-lit cave, moms have been devising ways to protect their kids from real or imaginary monsters. That’s not such a bad thing. Still, it helps to temper our worries with common sense — and a little humor. We need to lighten up on ourselves.
Things have a way of working out, after all. My son, the once-wiggly toddler, graduated college and moved into his own place last year. Despite my inevitable parenting slips, he grew up to be a sturdy, independent guy who loves his imperfect mom — and often reminds her not to worry so much.
Cindy on January 12th, 2009
“I take rejection as someone blowing in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.” — Sylvester Stallone
This week I’m filling out entry forms and taking photos of my work for an art competition. I’m new at submitting my artwork to gallery competitions — and nervous about subjecting myself to a brand-new form of rejection. Here’s a column I wrote a few years ago about learning to deal with rejection as a writer. . . .
The Slings and Arrows of Rejection
I meet them every time I attend a cocktail party or a business function. They’re the stressed-out professionals who’d love to quit their jobs and try “something more fun.” Most of them want to get published. I was cornered by one of these aspiring authors at a seminar last month. A colleague of my husband’s, the man works as a designer for a high-profile architecture firm, but he really wants to be recognized for his byline.
The colleague said he wrote essays occasionally. He had experienced the fleeting thrill of seeing a couple of his pieces in the local paper — âa real high,â as he put it. He wanted to publish more often in Sunday newspaper magazines, and he wanted to earn some money for his writing. But after receiving several rejection slips, he was ready to give up.
“How do you handle the rejection?” he asked. “I just hate rejection.â
“Well, I deal with it the same way architects do when their designs get shot down,” I told him.
“Oh, no,” he said. “That’s not as personal.”
Rejection and its evil twin, Criticism, are part and parcel of the writing life. I don’t care much for either of them, yet both keep in touch with me periodically. And while it’s true that rejection letters can sting for a few days, eventually you get used to them. You learn to accept that you can’t hit the editorial bull’s-eye every time.
A fellow writer once offered this consolation, and I believe she’s right: If you’re not getting rejection letters, you’re not aiming high enough or sending out enough material. You have to toughen up, get busy, and hold your breath every time you open the mailbox. And you must start the process all over again.
As I reminded the guy from the architecture firm, “personal” rejection is hardly the sole province of publishing. Anything you dearly hope to achieve, including love itself, holds the possibility of loss. That said, I’ll admit that the very word “rejection” dissolves bone marrow and turns warm blood to ice water. On a really bad day, it can make even the most aggressive self-promoter drop her best ideas and run home.
That’s why I often share a favorite story about Madeleine L’Engle, whose award-winning children’s book, A Wrinkle in Time, was rejected by more than forty publishers before it finally went to press. “Every rejection slip was like the rejection of me, myself,” L’Engle wrote. But she believed in her book, believed in its power to inspire children, and absolutely refused to let it die. Today it remains a beloved best-seller for young people.
It also helps to remember that the craft of writing offers second and third chances. As Frank Lloyd Wright said, “A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines.” Thankfully, redemption is so much easier for writers. We can reorganize, revise, revamp, and send our stuff out into the world again.
But the real secret to coping with rejection â aside from keeping faith in your own abilities — is to enjoy the process, the work itself. You have to fall in love with words and take pleasure in the way you string them together. And it’s essential to remember that publishing, as novelist Anne Lamott once said, is an addictive drug. Your last hit will never feel like enough.
Still, the small victories are sweet. Not long ago, one of my favorite pieces was rejected by a regional magazine. Several postage stamps later, it was accepted by a national publication for more money than I’d expected — and I hadn’t changed a word. That doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, of course. Just often enough to fuel my hopes and make my work more fun than architecture. – Cindy La Ferle
*This piece was first published in The Daily Tribune, Royal Oak, MI, then in my book, Writing Home. Last year it was excerpted in Sixty Candles: Reflections on the Writing Life, published by the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
Cindy on July 23rd, 2008
Lately I’ve been thinking about Sam Lamott, son of best-selling author Anne Lamott. I don’t know of many women who haven’t read Anne’s Traveling Mercies, her collection of candid essays on her long road to sobriety and conversion to Christianity. For many moms in my age group, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year, was their introduction to a whole new literary genre: the tell-all “momoir.”
Sam (who’s now 18) is often at the center of Anne’s writings. We’ve all watched Sam grow up on the page, from his first smelly diaper to the brutal arguments over his driving privileges.
Legions of us are forever indebted to Anne for admitting aloud that motherhood isn’t one sweet series of Hallmark moments. Still, I can’t help but wonder how the Sam Lamotts of the world — kids who’ve literally grown up in print — really feel about all this. Is Sam scrutinized more closely because of his famous mother’s writings? Is he held to a different standard of behavior? Do his friends understand (or resent) his position? Is the rest of the world also secretly wondering how he’ll turn out? Is it really any of our business?
For years, I’ve wrestled with this issue on a much smaller scale. And I’m still conflicted. My own son, now 22, recently asked me to remove a post I’d written about him on my own blog last month. The post was innocent enough. And the photo of my son was flattering. The verbiage was confined to a very short paragraph about how grateful I am that my son helped me redesign my Web site, and how much I’ll miss him when he leaves the state for his new job.
Problem was, I used his name, he said. The large corporation that had just hired him out of college was in the process of doing an in-depth background check on him, he reminded me. Therefore, he did not want his name or his photo floating around on my blog, no matter how flattering. A little paranoid? I’d say so. But at the same time, I understood my son’s point of view and why he was worried.
We’d been around and through this before. Years before I began blogging, I wrote a weekly column for our local daily newspaper. My assignment was to write about my family life — which naturally included funny or poignant moments involving my son and his friends. No matter how careful I was, my son was hurt or humiliated more than once by what was published in my column. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now.
But I haven’t. In fact, I’ve been at work on a memoir about preparing for the empty nest, and there’s no easy way to write it without mentioning my son’s first name throughout. Euphemisms like “my son” or “the kid” sound awkward in a longer work of nonfiction. For now, I’ve put the project on hold, despite the fact that an agent and a publisher are interested in it — and despite the fact that I believe my book would be of help to other women facing the empty nest transition.
So I deleted the offending post immediately. My son told me it would have been OK if I’d simply removed his name. But I wanted to prove to him that our relationship is far more important to me than a blog topic. I’m guessing he’ll outgrow this particular sensitivity, once he feels at home in his new job and settles into his new life on his own. But I’d sure love to talk to Sam about this. — Cindy La Ferle
–A shorter version of this post originally appeared on 50-SOMETHING MOMS Blog. Check the June Archives for “Sam Lamott” on the 50-SOMETHING MOMS site, and to read comments prompted by the original post.–
Cindy on June 26th, 2008
Shopping at my local craft store, I was paying for an armload of supplies when a chatty customer behind me asked what I was planning to make.
âYou must be an artist,â she said, after I briefly explained that I was getting started on a new collage.
Me, an artist? I’d been fooling around with altered books and other paper arts for several months, but never used the word âartistâ to describe myself. Art was my diversion — something I did for pure pleasure when I wasn’t writing essays and newspaper columns. âArtistâ was a term I usually reserved for the seriously gifted creator. It evoked poetic images of men and women cloistered in light-filled studios, producing museum-quality masterpieces. Most artists I knew had fine arts degrees, and their work was displayed in galleries. Like Benedictine monks, artists occupied sacred space in another world.
So I blushed when I told the other customer that, no, I’m not really an artist — just a person who dabbles. A crafter.
Labels of any kind, social or political, make me nervous. Driving home with my new art supplies that afternoon, I remembered how long it had taken me to call myself a âwriter.â I’d worked six years for a reference book publisher before I sold my first review to a local newspaper. Several freelance assignments followed, and soon after I published the first of several essays in a national magazine. Even then, I felt like a fraud whenever I used the word writer to describe myself in social situations. Real writers and authors wrote critically acclaimed bestsellers. They had New York agents and made guest appearances on âOprah.â Journalists like me wrote pieces that ended up as birdcage liner (or scraps in a collage).
At some point, every writer struggles with the same identity crisis. As Anne Lamott notes in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Pantheon Books), there is âsomething noble and mysterious about writing, about the people who could do it well, who could create a world as if they were little gods or sorcerers.â But whether we write or paint, sew or sketch, what we call ourselves is far less important than honoring â and believing in — our own creativity.
In his landmark bestseller, Care of the Soul (HarperCollins Publishers), Thomas Moore says that art is our birthright. He urges all of us to pull âthe artsâ down from the pedestal that makes them seem too precious or out of reach. He reminds us that everyone is an artist when his or her work is crafted with soul and passion.
âArt is not found only in the painter’s studio or in the halls of a museum,â Moore writes. âIn fact, when art is reserved as the province of professional artists, a dangerous gulf develops between the fine arts and the everyday arts.â
I often remind students in my writing workshops that every art or craft is as much about process as it is about product. It’s not about marketing or publishing or making a name for yourself. When you’re totally engaged in the act of creating something you love -â whether you’re searching for the perfect word for a sentence or a luminous shade of blue for a watercolor background — you know you’re on the right path. Meanwhile, removing the pressure to produce a âmasterpieceâ makes the process even more fun.
These days I head for my art studio whenever I’m blocked or need a creative nudge. And when my life feels like a series of disparate parts that don’t make sense, the paper arts are wonderfully therapeutic. Crafting a collage, like writing an essay, requires that I look at my world in new ways. I hunt for beauty in places I’ve overlooked before: tool boxes; hardware stores; recycle bins. I delve for possibilities in thrift shops and my own junk drawers. Every object is sacred, and even my junk mail is worthy of a second look. Everything has a story waiting to be told â not necessarily in words, but in shape, form, texture, and color.
Am I an artist? Maybe that’s not for me to say. Today, when people ask what I do, I tell them I love making art — and encourage them to do the same. — Cindy La Ferle
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This essay was originally published in Strut for Women, and was a third place winner in Detroit Working Writers 2008 Spring Readings Competition
