Hanging Out with Anne Lamott -- Point Loma Writer's Symposium By the Sea 2014

this ucsd-tv program is presented by university of california television like what you learn visit our website or follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with the latest programs welcome to our 19th annual writers symposium by the sea at Point Loma Nazarene University I'm Dean Nelson on the journalism faculty at the University and this is a joint effort program tonight with the story line conference and Donald Miller Don is best known probably for books like blue like jazz and his million miles in a thousand years and then the story line conference that he has started and with Don is Anne Lamott author of several fiction and nonfiction books more recently some assembly required help thanks and Wow that's all one book right that isn't three - um this effort but there isn't help wait now it's one book all right one book all right and more recently stitches and has been with us this is her third time with our writers symposium and always a favorite welcome to writers symposium and story line in hmm and you've got such a distinct voice in your writing and I'm just wondering was is there a time in your professional writing life where you just started to feel like yeah this is this is my voice now I'm no longer I'm no longer really trying or I don't know if you're like some people who imitated other type voices or writers first but the reason I'm asking is that I think there are a lot of people who started who have started writing trying to use an Anne Lamott type voice and and hopefully they've gotten past that I confess maybe I've done that once or twice but but it was there a time is there a time where you just feel like okay this is my authentic voice now well that's a good question I am of course you always sound pretty much like you really are from when you're a little child and but you figure out what people love and you figure out what brings you joy to playfully incorporate into conversation like I hate puns puns for me are not playful they're just like about rage so I've never heard puns and rage yes it's it's true and but I was a child who was bullied a lot because I looked so different and I was very sensitive and very smart I just got bullied bully bully and I learned to use humor to defuse that and to kind of get revenge and to get people on my side again and and I saw I was always funny and I think God just made me this way and and then when I start to write more seriously in my late teens I felt so insecure about how seriously I take the world which I do I always from about three years old just find it fun a kind of heartbreaking to be here for people and children and animals it was I was growing raised in the 50s and there was a tremendous amount of domestic violence and untreated alcoholism and and so I always really took things very seriously and I always got a very open heart and I grieved and it was like not attractive to the people in my family this was the Eisenhower 50s and before the women's movement and before gay liberation you were not supposed to be having these feelings that were not charming and so I got sent to my room and I just got shamed into being on a more adorable sort of person in the world and I could child that work out for you pretty well you know it all so luckily took a lot of drugs and drank and and I am hilarious with a few too many in a small crowd but I haven't had a drink or a drug in 27 years so but I do remember I was very funny I was very funny until the crying would the inevitable crying but so when I started writing I am I was trying to be who everyone had always loved me to be which I really think is what story line is about is breaking free of who everybody has always loved you to be to have the one precious life you were given to live and be here for and I wrote my first novel about my father's brain cancer and it was published when I was 26 in the first review I ever got was from Pete at Publishers Weekly it's a pre pre pub review it's called for the booksellers and it said something almost verbatim like whatever meager charms this book possesses not that I memorized it whatever meager book charms this book possess possesses are marred by the author's constant show off he overkill and it changed me and I because it was true because what I needed to do to people to do was for people to see yes I write about very serious stuff I write about loss I write about true things I write about our true heart experience of being human but no I'm not depressed I'm not like a buzzkill I'm like this fun happy happening girl and so then it really took a long time to be able to claim my humor since I didn't want to use it to convince people that I was going to lose right and so but the thing that happens if your writer and you both of you can attest to this you're an okay writer because the quality of your best friends and your editor and they take out all the stuff that is you trying too hard and you try to charm people because charming me is not probably going to be nourishing it's not going to heal and and I don't we know who has who has the time so I have always had brilliant friends and editors and they have helped me find the balance between being a person who has a sense of humor and being a person who a little child still I'll be 60 next month but a little child still who finds a pretty heartbreaking for most people to be here at all so do you feel like you've got it now though when you when you write are you thinking yeah okay this is me I don't try to deliberately write in my what we would say is my voice but I am you know there's just certain things that I think are funny like the word bitter is always funny like to say well you seem bitter everybody will see you you want to laugh but you don't know if everyone else will but it's just very funny you should do it tomorrow you should seem to say to people I hope I don't seem bitter and they will just all laugh they will I promise and and there's a certain way I have of a certain delivery I have that I guess I have honed because I'm working on something right now and I can feel myself doing it and I ask myself is this organic is this natural to the rhythm of the telling the story or is this me trying to sound like me because you like to last few books or because I'm scared you know we're all scared to do something to different but so it's it's pretty complex question I'd actually love to write about it because I do sound like me and I look just like me too but that's it that's okay like people always say oh are you in like a know who's that but I looked just like me and there's just a voice like a musician would have certain songs that would come through him or her that word that might be somebody who loves acoustic music which I do rather than stuff that's more intense or with more fingering in the industry in the strings and so I you know I love plain writing I also like all everybody I write what I would love to come upon you know I love people that will write plainly and not do a lot of pyrotechnical stuff I don't like wordplay it makes me very worried I I love if people tell me the truth if people will just say look you're a storyteller you're saying to me Annie do you have a minute can I just tell you and I go yeah that's what I said that's it each all three of us are saying to all of you tell them in it and so I am but I want to tell you to stuff you know there's so little truth being told in a popular culture I share my experience strength and hope and and it usually comes out funny and I take the stuff out alta - off you overkill what's the difference between finding your voice and having a stick and I asked this personally because I'll try to turn something in to the publisher and they'll stay and I'll think it's good my wife thinks it's wonderful my mother kind of likes it and yes in really hello sir we'll come back see that's today no my mother likes poems about george w bush and that's about it but it makes her sad but anyway go on mother most people like oh so the publisher will come back and say hey we really miss you know fish stick the stick and the stick is loser don find some wisdom plays it out in his life and gets better right over and over and over again right and and sometimes you just don't feel like loser Don right so but I got it you know so so there's a wrestling with that and then also coming back to it and saying no this is not just a stick this is really a voice that's been given to you and it works and you know you're just gonna sound like this is your Bob Dylan voice and did you ever struggle with stick versus voices well I think stick see I am very involved with helping people watch the self-talk because it's such a way of of self-injury and it's so you just know you don't even notice it the way that you would couch what is in fact the gift that you have to offer us is that with your own voice there's a 1,700 people here and we're all we all know secretly we're kind of losers and we we we fake it we've had to fake a lot of patience and and equanimity and we do the best we can and it's pretty disappointing and some days go better than others and some days you just hate everybody you know and that's the story right and and that's in the story as something happens where are you in us but it's not your stick it's your capturing of the one human story that there is which is that we screw up right and left we usually don't know what we're doing the flashlight is so small that were given to see by and and we tell the story like I know when you were a child like when I was a child I was the one people wanted to tell the story happened collectively to us on the blacktop right that the three of us were here there were few more other people and something happened there someone got in trouble or got injured or this was I haven't or a parent came and there was drama around this parent and when it happened we're both going whoa because that's the most human experience of all is whoa and we want you to tell what just happened well I was one of those children - I could tell you the story I could figure out a place to start that's like two-thirds of the problem right okay well we were all sitting around and it was morning recess and JB Halpern's mother showed up and no one had seen her for weeks and but you would say in so and then what and then okay and then they'd say okay and then I forgot to say this one thing happened and then the whistle blew but then JB help and sister Robyn and then okay and then and then we can all figure out what actually we all just went through but that's a gift that you were chosen to to manifest instead of being somebody that could edit the gift which is also huge or to be the person that could put it to music you could say okay find a place to start find the lily pads on you know on the pond that you're going to take us all across and then sort of show us how to get out of the water and then we'll go oh my god and then we can tell it ourselves later so that would be my version of what you do it wouldn't be stick now see with me because I have to really watch the self talk which i think is very malignant the bought the bad body talk and the stuff I would say if I were not being conscious I'd say you know all of my stories are about the exact same thing the same thing I'm all caught up with myself I'm completely irritated with everyone and I'm and I can see that things aren't going to go my way which is you know the most important thing that they that everybody do what I wish they would do that would make us all be able to relax and that we can all figure out who to blame and feel good about that together as one so and then something happens I get injured or I get lost or I get pierced a number turned to them to the holy moment I return to the present I am return to my breath the umbilical breath that connects me to the universe into the Holy Spirit and to you into Dean and to NTU and then I can tell you this is what happened I actually thought it was a disaster it gave me me back it was actually the movement of grace but grace doesn't look like ice skaters you know it it looks like us or what grace looks like and so you know putting together these new pieces and the writer is defined by having terrible self-esteem and this raging wounded ego and a narcissistic personel I disorder right I mean you may Dean well and I don't know maybe over you to definitely go I'm quite confident it's none of us have any confident if you're a writer this is a good news none of us have any confidence we don't know if our voice is any good but we just do it that's all it separates the three of us from a lot of other writers so I would say oh these are all the same stories and writing but they're not new things have happened new things have come it's like the tide pools you know new waves have come in and they bought brought krill and new bits of shell and new bits of seaweed and a child looking over the tidepools can see something completely different and be blown away what I remember where I was when I read page 49 and 50 of traveling mercies which was my introduction to your book stunning I don't know what take time stops Jesus is the little cat running along deep and the thing that I felt was oh this is my story and then I I was woken up from that when a friend of mine who's a very conservative young evangelical girl said you know I read in LaMotte she just tells my story I literally went there and she's not tell your story at all right woman there's nothing you've got in with you it right everybody wait wait that woman has nothing in common with me right you have this amazing ability to make us all feel like your story is our story you're doing but what are the commonalities what are the common on is that you're looking for in the writing is it love is it lost is it loneliness is it hope is it what do you say this is the common human story and I'm gonna focus on this Rutledge's yeah narcissistically right focusing on your own story well I think it's true what I said to dr. Dean in the beginning which is that you write what you'd love to come upon and the stuff that where you and me were in Bob Gough and the people are writing like kind of hilarious weird spiritual encouragement stories our Olympic rings are really overlapped we're writing about what it's really like we're writing about what we go through in an ordinary human day where it's where we are tired and we can't think as straight as we want to or as we used to and and people are really really suffering and people are behaving horribly and we don't know whether we're going to be okay also we don't know if we can keep the scam up and get another book out or you know we're just thinking these same thoughts she got you didn't say you know let me talk about in my case I would say talk about beating a dead horse but that's what you were saying you were saying I've got this stick they want to stick but it's just that I tell the same story I'm a human like what et is called a human merely being the people I love are going through unfathomable suffering and some of them are young and some of our children that are going to die and some of them are our people that have been institutional you know peeps the run of a human life and I'm just telling the stories about it because a hundred percent of the time in my experience that you and I wear the same pair of glasses as Christians a hundred percent of the time grace Pat's last you don't give up till the miracle and if you haven't gotten the miracle story's not over and for some reason we kind of wait it out we kind of like noodling around I mean I have to edit out a lot of noodling narrow it's like I have a note on my computer that says get on with it so the question is how do we trust that it's like how does a musician's trust that people want to keep hearing the same old songs how does the minister trust that the people are fed by the litany by the liturgy by the repetition by that Taize taizé music that says it's what is comforting to us as human beings it's a rizo it's the rhythm of a newborn who can hear one thing that seems to be constant and it's connected to warmth and food it's like the word just I don't know like I'm not Susan Sontag or Margaret Atwood and and I'm I have this one batch of stories like there was this guy that was a priest a Catholic priest who was instrumental in helping a get off the ground although he was not an alcoholic himself and he said sometimes I think that heaven is just a new pair of glasses and I would say that that is the story you and I are both excited to tell we see it we tell someone and then we get that feeling at us of ah right because that's the story I'd love to come upon when you tell it in a blog I go thank you I've heard you tell it with different characters different details different eras but it's the story it's the heartbeat it's the rhythm it's this truth to a person I love and trust so you know I draw close so so are you constantly looking for material though or do you feel like like the tidepool image that you used where it's just constantly filling and refreshing I'm remembering one of your a story from one of your previous books about a man who was mean to his dog right yeah and and so I mean when you saw that or when you see anything you are you consciously saying oh I'm gonna write about that oh no because life was going on and I was with my son and our dog 20 years ago and a man on this little beach at San Quentin curiously enough I start being mean to his dog and I was trying to protect my son and and my dog and my little one inside me from the toxic energy that somebody being cruel to a dog is exuding you know we're on the beach building altars to God and we're laughing we're doing that you know carbonated holiness of laughter and giggling and a man's hurting his dog and I kind of got us out of there but then I started wanting to tell the story you know because but it doesn't I don't sit there go this is great you know I also a pen in my back pocket too but I mean sometimes I do don't get me wrong but uh but usually I'm just having a life experience and and later it's like the new pair of glasses you get a tiny bit of distance from it and you start as a writer you go hi wonder I wonder if I always because I have such terrible self-esteem think I wonder if it's a strong enough story because it because it usually has to point to something bigger it has to ultimately be the one story I know which is at Grace bats last that there is meaning that there is meaning and if we're not finding it it's because the story is not over and more will be revealed but you know I lately I've had a I've been trying to put together a collection of both old and new pieces they're really about the the way that a lot of the stories that I would always say were kind of sad and then touching and there's a little bit of Hope or actually stories all victory you know they're about people showing up in situations of such deep grief and catastrophe and just sitting there and just being willing to show up and sit there and feel terrible with a beloved person or a community and suffering and but I suddenly realized another way to tell it would be this is victory over the nihilistic experience that that the goods suffer so and that it's just a pretty barbaric planet we live on and you know we're a we're a hostile species you know Cain is still killing Abel every day and but so I thought there's another way to couch it but then I start to get that panicky jungle drum feeling of the well is run dry you know it's all over for England my mother was English and so battle cries it's all over for England you know and the Germans are going to be too but both during England and the hockey team and the soccer teams and the and I also that we're all doomed I would say both of our stories often pass through its like pilgrims progress through that Vanity Fair first and then through the place where you go it's all over it's all hopeless and you're sick of your own self that's where the pain comes from of that on't you like raft rejection from your own self so lately I've been thinking this kind of panicky feeling because I want to do another book pretty quickly like I did some of some no stitches and help thanks well and and I just start to get that fearful feeling of am I going to be able to do this I just don't have it yeah I don't I don't actually have it today because you take the action and the insight follows you don't think your way out of that hopelessness or that used up at ness of that sick of your own self admitted Ehrman's undoubtedly have a word but but we'll say sick of your own self admits a very very deeply profoundly human reality so but the thing was you take the action you take action and I got my work done you know had a four year old my grandson I had my son I had two dogs a very very ill dog I had a house that had all this stuff going on and I said this they are all gone at quarter of nine and I said to myself Annie a quarter of nine we are sitting down and it's not like I go well if you feel like it well you're flying to San Diego so anyone would understand if you didn't but you know what I had three hours precious time of my own and I did it i sat down like I would with you you know I'd say Dean you have three hours we're leaving were done with you two but no we wouldn't we'd say we're leaving we're going to go find some real apples we're going to do whatever the day well however it unfurls and you have till twelve that's three hours three hours by the you know algorithms of writing is about two hours of writing right two hours ten minutes and I said Dean do it and you would do it because you have a voice encouraging you to yeah but wouldn't I rather check my emails yeah and maybe see what my hair would look like if I parted it on them yeah yeah instead of on the Left mm-hmm definitely and I want to see if I can get my arms to look like Michelle Obama's by my 60th birthday which is April 10th yeah but you know you get to do it I am right now I told you guys I'm not eating sugar right now and I get to have sugar I can go back to the hotel and eat my body weight and Snickers if I want but it's going to mean that my mind isn't going to be as clear and it means I'm going to pay for it it's like Carolyn Mae so I actually really like who wrote why people don't heal and how they can she said everyday you get $100 in your psychic account every day every single person here George Bush Dick Cheney you know the most awful sport sport tennis sport in the professional game of tennis everybody you get $100 you get to spend it as you are led to spend it but it's going to be gone you know you can spend $27 trying to get your bald spots not to show you know or you can spend like 18 dollars trying to save and fix somebody because you get kind of a thrill of power and superiority by by rescuing people but you spent $18 on that right and so pretty soon right you know you have to ask yourself I'm going to have like $50 I can spend on the writing I think I actually want to spend about seven on line I do want to spend seven on line but I want to spend 43 or what has been 37 writing but you get to ask yourself how I'm going to spend this one precious life and day I have here I would rather do anything but write still after all the books you've you've written all the columns you've done you'd still try to avoid it oh yeah oh yeah I would what I like to do is to be with my dogs my grandson I love to be a church I love to read The New Yorker on a couch I love to read great writing my life for all of us for almost everyone here I bet has been about being a reader I'm a person who was found by the written by chapter books at 5 years old and I'm a person had almost 6e who will go home tonight in a strange town chromebit with a chapter book get found get lost get found like you were saying that people that people might see a reflection in our work and I'll find a reflection what I'm reading I'll go that is exactly right that's what I was trying to say so no it's very hard for me and it doesn't come easily I don't have confidence I am easily distracted like a rhesus monkey and no you know what I'm like I'm like a dog with a chew toy I'm like with a dog with like a little bit of leather ear and I'm like okay all right now okay right okay now and then I thought then I fling it you know I fling the leather pigs here and I then I chase it down okay and I got it I got it now I got roots really good a little then Flanagan you know because you know maybe it was the drugs I don't know but I don't know but that but that is what it's like for me to sit down and what I do is I do it as a debt of honor I got it's like to be a writer as to been given one of the five golden tickets in the Willy Wonka and the chart and the chocolate Charlotte and Chocolate Factory it's a gift it's a debt of honor I do it by prearrangement I'm strict with myself I'll be strict with you I would say you know just do it you're going to feel so great all afternoon if you get your work done today you get to not do it but then you're going to feel really sad you're going to really feel regretful and that begins to speak for a whole life if you've wanted to write if you've wanted to dance if you've wanted to join a chorus if you want to get back to playing piano that you were very good at until other people found it very inconvenient for you to get so lost in your music and you said I don't know how long I'm going to live but I will be playing piano the day I die and I do that with my writing I say it's quarter of nine that I was getting picked up for the airport at twelve I had three hours 15 minutes and I'd say I spent two hours and 20 of them writing and I got something that was a really bad first draft into begger she ape a better shape you know that's all I can do on any given day you you've put yourself out there and you're you know especially remember Mars in your fiction too and it's it's come back and probably changed the nature of your life and how you live and your experiences you and your son Sam collaborated on a book and you've written about Sam before and your other books from the time he was an infant and I'm wondering if you ever sat down with Sam and said hey this is what's going to change when you put your life out there I mean was there ever a conversation where you kind of set him down and and almost warned him in a way well he has seen me just go through it you know he has seen me some of the pieces I wrote at salon I would get four and five hundred letters and and most of them would be just attacks on my character and in fact Sam wants upon reading a story about the one time I slapped him when he was almost 16 and I wrote about it because grace came into our heart and into our living room and and healed us and it when I saw it well every parent here is going to get it and that's going to be I'm going to give them the truth that we're all in the same boat and as I said some days go better than others and he read the responses and he wrote to my editor he said can I write your editor and do his name David I said yeah and he said my mother quits so this was eight years ago at salon and he said your job as an editor is to protect her so that she can write the very very best stuff she's capable you didn't protect her said and warned me about this tidal wave and you know what it's like to get a bad review and you know what it's like to not get reviewed how painful that is you know and the fantasy you have before your work is released into the world of what I hit it's going to be and what an impression is going to make and often you just don't hear anything sometimes even though I would have liked this better if to all thank you but so I said to him it's going to be really weird we are going to get some bad reviews it was a sequel to operating instruction Sam had a child at 19 and my editor had pitched this idea of writing a journal and I said I think would be exploitive and my editor said not if you don't exploit anyone and so Sam and I had mostly me I'd say 80% me had written a journal of his son's first year so you know but the thing was we were just met with such incredible love we got some bad reviews and you know we did we didn't we got on the New York Times list for a couple of weeks but not 52 weeks which is what I've been secretly hoping and and I called him the third week when we fell off I said Oh Sam we tweet I said I feel so I felt so sad because I wanted to save my child from not having you know success and great self-esteem because you just do as a parent you know you code it black belt codependents and you have to heal from that too tragically you do or you hurt your children but I said Oh Sam my bad news we're not on the list this week and he goes God who cares and so mostly that was a good experience the writing was just like what I've described that it was not only pulling my own teeth but it was pulling so and goes his teeth other people really don't want you to pull their teeth and this was a teenager you know with the infant and then a little baby and so I just told them I said I'll do the book if you'll do the book and you're going to be furious if you agree to it a lot of the time because you're gonna have a million things to do besides write this book besides get your work in and I'm very strict I'm strict as a Sunday school teacher all freedom all freedom comes from discipline it does that's what meditations about so freeing your mind by has structure but by plugging and hooking up to a structure and so I was very strict and when I was mad I said I'm really mad because you said Saturday and you didn't get it to me Saturday and it's Monday and I gave you two extra days and then he get it done so I'm with I'm that way with myself with a lot of militant and maternal self-love that my faith and my recovery of giving me the quality of my friendships have given me so yeah but we did we just had a route we toured together to the country and we just had a beautiful time and then it was fine we go to the hotel room and over eat together you know we get room service and we plug into like violence shows we watch like eight law and orders and in a row and then it was really sweet and you know you know you mentioned you mentioned Sunday school a lot of the stuff that you have written has included the church that you go to why is that such an important thing and could you tell Donn because he hates Church I know I get a follow up question about what you do with people who demonize you that's what I'm demonizing Donn it's just those are the haters I'm not a hater his your mother put him up to that he's although I know she called right before we went on I happen to be at probably the only church I would ever be you for again I went I go to a church I was going there drunk free year I've been at my church 28 years I've been sober 27 so there's that gap year it was very integrated it was a lot of old black woman from the end men from the south from the Great Migration it was a lot of people that were people with families it was it was it was all the races it was all the ages was intergenerational Zinner everything and that meant there was room for me you know and they didn't try to get me to figure anything out which was so incredible they didn't get me to agree that I believe something they didn't halsell me they didn't threaten me with home visits that's most important thing if there are any ministers here tonight the most important thing if you have a newcomer no home visits you'll never see them again they may move if you accidentally wrote your address down in the narthex they may move to avoid the home visit they could see that I was a very wounded woman and that I was scared and I was nuts I had three books out I was pretty successful a thin which I loved I was like 20 pounds thinner and I was as dirt poor dirt poor borrowing rent did you just see that I said somehow ended up with my butt on a chair at their church and it was like Bob golf was talking earlier about the scent of the scent of bread or the scent of Cointreau the scent the heavenly sounds like the reason realtor's bake cookies and houses they want to sell or make toast you know and even though there wasn't a particular scent it was nutritious and it was like in the cartoons once when the wife that you know these like the 50 so the the wife bakes cakes and the man is a clod and falls asleep in front of the TV so the claw but she puts the pie on the sill and the finger the aromatic finger of deliciousness comes and it taps the clod on his chest and he gets up and he falls it that was what I felt I felt an aromatic drawing towards I felt something drawing me towards where everything had been this like I'm very high-strung I probably was probably clear I'm a very high-strung person I'm skittish I have some mental health issues I have you know I'm like this way and I could do the sacrament of plop because I knew they weren't going to come and try and get me you know and I could sit there and I could breathe and I could leave when I had to I had to leave for the heavy Jesus stuff because I did that's not what I was there for our sisters life singing was beautiful and I love to say I don't sing well and I sing loudly and then I'm sometimes I'm such a space case I was a five-year-old space case I'm worse and I've seen the wrong like verses you know I haven't been noticing the wrong verses but I love to sing and it's again it's about finding a place where you can be part of where you hook into something so much bigger than your own you know tightly wrapped mind so I write about it because I raised my child in the church because I was baptized I was given life there I did and never knew and never to this day figured out much you know it's all pretty mysterious to me but they but I'm in you know I got in and they said we you know we want you you're welcome here it's a come as you our party exactly as you are the message Jesus said I want you your aunt you're here you're mine contrast that the truth of what you're saying and the beauty of what you're saying to a broader evangelical community that would that probably a smaller very loud group of which would contend with your political views would contend with some your theological ideas and do so in a way that is that is vehement that is that is deceptive and manipulative how do you as a writer have those things said about you and keep the faith keep your love for the church keep your sanity mmm-hmm I don't know you I used to get a lot more attention from the fundamental right the far right in America I remember just getting some bizarre calls in the south when I would be on the local NPR or you know in the deep south and people would call I remember this one woman it was so loud hello miss Lamont welcome to wherever it was Tennessee and she said I just wonder how funny you're gonna see when you're rotting in hell and Wow but you know paul tillich famously said that the opposite of faith isn't doubted certainty and for people to be so certain that I'm doomed they're fine they're their mothers were better than mine and I'm doomed is the basic position is crazy to me and so I have learned to say oh thank you for calling you know or the universal sign of or like can we go to the next corner because 90% would be very sweet we'd be saying I ran out on my church I hated my church I hate still what it does to what it tells people about themselves I hate what it does to children who haven't come out yet I hate what it tells girls about girls and where their value comes and I hate I hit that but I do love Jesus let me ask you some of you you mentioned that you were you're about to turn 60 mm-hmm and so a lot of times people come to a certain age and they say you know whatever success I've made of my life I've made it or whatever mess I've made of my life I've made it and now I need to kind of take stock of it and say you know Richard Rohr talks about you you spend half your life building this container mm-hmm then you spend the second half of your life trying to figure out what do you want what do you want to put in that container how do you get out well yeah yeah build in a rising storyline is how to get out of that what yeah how do you get out of the container so so are you thinking about that at all you're thinking about who who is who am i if I'm not writing if I'm not funny if I'm not on speaking engagements just fundamentally Who am I you ever think about that of course I think about that because it's a central question of our existence but at the same time by the time you're 60 you've seen people so much younger died and you understand what a vulnerable species we are you think everything's kind of going away and the phone rings and you realize somebody who is 40 as having a biopsy and people are worried and they have little ones and on the phone at the mail comes the email comes have a minute did you hear did you turn on the turn on the TV turn on the TV and and what I mean I think the reason that our work is that we're so similar in both of our material and our heart stories is that we both have felt so trapped in who we had agreed to be and and it's like so scary to say I'm not sure that's who I really am I'm really sorry but I'm not going to be that anymore I'm off I love you and I'm off and I'll be back and then I got to find out you know it's the Sacred Journey it's the hero's journey it's all of great literature and it's scary and it's exhilarating and it's really most of all deeply inconvenient right because you're in the container and everybody people need you to be a certain way to do this for them you've always before done that for them when they call you say of course I'll do that you look at your calendar if you have children you know really pretty much exactly what you're going to be doing you know I mean I have a grand tub and I really know exactly what three days almost and then there'll be the loveliness and the the radical silliness and the surprises and stepping on the cosmic banana peel and the last person on earth that I expected to help me of helping me up and or you know whatever but that's the question we're here to to discover is who are we in in the face of death and our vulnerability how are we supposed to live are you going to pull in well you would say no we're going to blow it open we're going to blow it open it's sort of like you know what it's like pick up sticks where you you put them all in on the table and you pick the easy ones well I'm a woman I'm a sober alcoholic I'm a mom I'm a grandmother I'm the daughter of two dead parents I'm a cousin I'm a very active person in my family very active in recovery I'm a an activist I'm politically very plugged in I'm kind of a slacker in a lot of ways I'm kind of an OCD slacker which is an interesting comment grill you know mixed grill but maybe but you pick the stuff you're sure of and then you often have to break the stack of clump together pick up sticks together right to find out what is true what is your and what can you do what could you do later today say we get you home by 10:00 what could you do can you carve out a tiny space to begin your work tomorrow even not knowing what you're doing can you get that you know get that old feeling of childhood back we just get the pencils ready you know can you find the socks that are so cushioning custom or you really really could go for a walk and I'll go for a walk every single day and you go for a walk to and you know you'd feel fantastic you know you would experience the holy spirit you know you would see the glory of God and hear it and birdsong and hear it in under foot so what can you still do what are you supposed to be doing you know this risk telling the story again of when my friend Pammy was dying and I asked her and she was in a wheelchair with a wig with a 1 an 18 month old daughter my goddaughter and I said does this dress make me look fat and she said Annie you don't have that kind of time she was 37 and she had a month she less than a month and said you know that kind of time so that's what story line is that's what Christianity is about it's about waking up so out getting the plant miss rotten spritzing yourself awake am I going to be I'm not going to keep doing what I've always done that has always left me feeling empty and numb you get to you get your 100 psychic dollars a day you get to and I understand if it's very frightening for you to try something different but if you could go in and pull out one pick up stick that is definitely going to leave the table much different than it was and maybe lose you a turn make it easier for someone else to get some points Kai if you could do that that would be so so exciting for everyone that you know after they got over the resentment that uh that you wanted your life back you had decided to claim your life get to not-it's another image to be if a mural fell down and you all you could do is start to get to know each of those tile chips and if you'd never quite notice how beautiful orange and certain Blues are you would never wear orange and blues but you're playing with the tiles you're getting to know you're trying them out here going to just work on this little corner the bad critical voices they'll say what's not going to get us we're going to do two by two quarter I don't know I was going to get me as I never notice how beautiful oranges and blues are that's all I'm going to do and the tiles are different depths and I just want to feel them because I want to feel them I'm like alive I just feel really alive like a child with fingerprints I just want to do it for another hour that's what I'm going to do take it or leave it that's what I have to offer do it for an hour and then we're going to all see what works for the common good so I'll tell you where what I'm breaking through right now my container the container for me because all of my suffering is mental all of it is mental all of it is this disease of good ideas of thinking that I know what would be best for everyone and how people should proceed I really believe that if I had the time to sit with all 1,700 of you I could heat help each and every one of you and if you have children teenagers that are in trouble I could help them also and left to my own devices I would want to but I'm in recovery for that because that's a fatal and progressive disease also and and the box that I'm in is this mental thinking I just I've been calling it victimized self-righteousness lately because if I feel a little bit victimized whoa is that familiar and that self-righteousness where you feel superior that's what some of the very the most awful racism and homophobia in the countries about is at least you're better thinking this batch of people you may have destroyed the lives of everybody in your family but you're still better than them right and I get this self-righteousness and I get this sense of being victimized and I've gotten to the point a miracle the meat tenderizer of grace has brought me to a place where I'm catching it instead of having it for several days it's like my Basecamp that's how I survived alcoholism and my childhood was I felt victimized I tried to control and fix and rescue and I felt better than because I wasn't destroying children anyway let me we're almost out of time here and I I'd like you to give some writing advice to our audience okay well you know the bad news is you just have to do it it's like extras you know it's like exercise you I never wait for inspiration I very rarely I had an inspiration the other day it was funny but I usually don't usually have one story or even a fragment of a story that I'm pretty sure I could tell and you just do it you sit down you commit to having your butt in the chair for a certain amount of time and they're really they're really are algorithms two hours buys you one hour 15 minutes and there's no way around it because that's what the spiritual life is like it's not efficient it's not linear and it's not based on reason and you say I'm going to sit down for two hours I can sit down for an hour and 45 minutes which buys you an hour I mean sit down for four hours I had three two dad three hours 15 minutes I'm just going to sit down I'm just going to do it and it's really only the first part that is awful it's like being you know we all have at this age you get arthritis and everything hurts a little bit and injuries never heal I just want to tell you they heal like two years later when something else has come up and and as your vision has failed you completely and you sit down and you just do it and you shake through the arthritis and you say to yourself like I would say to you if you were really stuck I'd say well what about that one story well this was Bob's story but say you had tried to create a church for some people that weren't getting married and it didn't work and so they had the wedding on the lawn well anyone in the right mind would prefer to have the wedding on the lawn right so it's kind of a great story because it turned out to have the intention of providing a sacred building under which to take on the blessing of relationship and at the same time you were under this it was much much much much much much bigger because you were under the infinite sky right and you were in the in breath and and you say I know but it I don't think it really goes anywhere it's a but just tell that story it's a page and a half and you say well I could tell it but then you sort explained to me like namin why you weren't really going to write that you didn't think I was quite getting what kind of story you're good at telling and I would say but I think it would be okay with Bob if you told that story and it's a very sweet story why don't you just do it you ain't got anything better going on and then you would do it but the thing is you get tricked because you're in the cold water remember being a little kid on little swim classes and swim teeth you'd be blue you'd be a little blue child and they make you kid in the water and you'd weigh like one pound you'd be a little blue one pound being and you get in the water but after about eight minutes you'd be really warm you'd be laughing laughter is the key that grace has arrived and and that your things are going to be semi okay which is what we can really hope for and so when you sit down and you write that little bit that you could possibly do you're in and you're going to warm up and the arthritis is going to be better and you're going to start your self save yourself a writer well what if what if from there I went to something that just happened in Nashville with this or that and the voices again are going to go say well I think that's kind of like faking it or for it but it's all faking it enforcing it it's all stitches on knitting bits of quilt together and you try them out they don't work you get out the scene where / you know but if you get you figure out what doesn't work maybe a little tiny bit closer to figure out what does work and then you remember like I always remember anything I've written that either of you have ever liked or anyone here has ever like began as a god-awful first draft it was 12 13 14 pages of what turned out to be a six page story I spewed I gave way too many details I but that's the way you work that's the way I write I don't find the beginning until page three the ending is almost always on page eleven you know so that as a rule of thumb and and but you get it all down because that's what kids do and you just get it all down in you and you kind of beat back the really awful voices in your mind like you'd run interference for me and you go no one is ever going to be sick of you telling the same old stories with the same old voice that's why we keep showing up I got all kind of mule oh and then I go I'll put in one more hour until that one story you like I don't know if it goes next but I'll just do it and it's a trick and you get in and you write your terrible first draft and then the worst is over and then you have pages you don't have this an assaultive ice-flow anymore you have pages you have rhythm you have memories you have visions you have ideas you have stuff you overheard you have stuff you bothered to get down you have stuff you'd love to come upon and it's badly written and it's a miracle and then you say to yourself I did it and then you that you know the next and then you have the secret to be a Christian you have a secret with you all the time that you're loved and chosen against all odds and the secret of being a writer is it against all its you've got your work done for that day and the next day excu a lot easier because you're either going to know what to do what lilypad all you have to do is capture that one lily pad that we talked about in the car I agree that's all you have to do and then there ended that day you can have a really bad drags me too long and agree to many details and and I'm going to be able to go I got it I got can I have it give it to me and you will and I'm going to cut I'm going to pace and go here is your beginning do you see what I mean it's right here it's at the bottom of page one it's right there then do it then here think about I'm asking you to consider ending it a couple pages earlier you don't need to tell us what the story is about because you told us the story all you have to offer us is the story you know so that's pretty much every single thing I know about writing you you

Channel: University of California Television (UCTV)

Views: 56,603

Rating: 4.7543187 out of 5

Keywords: Stitches, Operating Instructions, Some Assembly Required

Id: mjJ_0ldVjBE

Length: 58min 25sec (3505 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 16 2014