Salon@615-Anne Lamott in Conversation with Ann Patchett

and Anne Lamott was in conversation in the back room with Ann Patchett and we almost missed our cue there's an there are two overflow rooms so we have to be sure that we say hi and send our love out to the overflow rooms the first thing that I want it well aside from saying what a thrill I'm so glad you're here and Nashville is so glad you're here and the seats to this event were taken in three minutes after it was posted online they were they were gone instantly one thing that I've always wanted to say to you is that once a year twice a year in a signing line somebody comes up to me comes up to my table gets all flustered they're like I can't believe I'm meeting you I gotta get a good bird by bird is my favorite book and I was just wondering do people ever tell you how much they enjoyed Bel Canto not so much oh that makes me see ya it makes me feel like a loser I'm you right yeah um okay I've got two sets of questions is Liz Coleman in this room I don't know maybe liz is in the overflow room because she works here I have two sets of questions I have some of my own questions and then I have a second set of questions from Liz Coleman who works in the library and is a friend of mine and Liz is your biggest fan which probably a lot of people are your biggest fans but she's read all of your books and she's driven hours and hours to see you hey Liz there she is there she is and so I have the pan Patrick questions and then I have the Liz Coleman questions and then we'll have questions from the audience so we're all very balanced first off catch us up on the kids what's what's up now today with Amy and Sam and Jack's and how did that all wind up well it wound up unbelievably well although at the end of some assembly required you always felt like there was a chance that the law um might move with the grandchild an axe I was talk I would have put money on it I know well I would have to but I went to that experience of having to get to the point where I was okay that I was surrendered to what was going to happen because you know the whole book is about how little control we have that were in control of so little and I want to be in control of so much really everything everything and what happened was Sam and Amy did end up splitting up which I think was great I'm always in favor of people splitting up and they live in the same county now and they and they're raising jacks together but they're you know they're so young still they have a three and a half year old almost a four year old boy and Sam's 23 Amy's 24 so I mean it's while but um she's not moving with Jack's to Chicago so I feel like everything else is gravy do they get along I mean do they cope arrant okay I think these are the kinds of incredibly personal questions I would never ask anyone except I wrote the book that's right um you know they I wouldn't say they get along so much as that they're kind of dealing with a really difficult situation and sometimes there are hints of grace and other times it's just really hard you know because basically like a divorce with a little child involved and so it has been extremely challenging but you know amy was at our house on Easter bringing Jack's over and everybody was putting love on her and and it was what it was and they were sharing Jack's for the day and so you can't really get from some of the worst of where we worked with that so I just you know I wear a little gratitude bracelet everywhere so that I can just go thank you thank you thank you thank you this is fine if this is fine for now god you're halfway home and Sam's out of school and went out and took a year off to he started back up but he's only taking classes on Friday he's a graphic designer an industrial designer and he has a great job it's kind of wild because it's a book tour a story where there was this guy I went to Detroit curiously two times in two weeks last year on book tour and I happen to love Detroit I love the Midwest and I have a slice off for Detroit and there's this huge kind of handsome but married guy sitting next to me I noticed and we at the very end when he woke up he said what people say oh my wife loves your books oh my god I always say that's the sentence a man is most likely speak to my wife my wives or sometimes my mother loves you yeah yeah never I love you yeah not no I've never actually the honorees I've ever heard of you it's cuz my wife really looks for book um but also the implication is she'll read anything but anyway then um little by little he said we started talking about what we do in San Francisco I told him I was there on a book tour for some assembly required and the long and the short of it is about two weeks later Sam had a job at his he has a toy company called it's a toy called blasphemy which is a board game where there's different colored game pieces of Jesus all trying to get to the cross and there's there's cards and they have a couple other games but this is their big one and then Anna and Sam's a designer there now and it was funny because I said well look just have the book I brought with me Oh let me sign that for you I'd be so glad to it goes well let me sign you let me send you blasphemy I said oh no no there's a big game shop in San Rafael and he goes well it's a hundred dollars and I said twenty Hickory and then we got blossomy and Sam got a job so see this is why I believe in God because what are the odds right well and what are the odds that a modern religious mother would find the son a job with a modern religious board game I know I know blasphemy it's called it's so quirky but it's also so funny because people think that your kids are gonna be sort of mini-me you know yeah and um and say I am all words and I always was all words I was a girl like I'm sure you were I was say that found religious salvation in Chapter books at five and six right as soon as you discover this chapter books and it's true of me now at 58 if I have the chapter book that I'm loving right now you know if you have the new Elizabeth Strout then I'm okay I'm gonna be safe and I'm gonna be more or less okay for ten days you want to come back on Monday liz is gonna be here oh god I would love to yeah I am such a huge admirer of hers but Sam doesn't have the word thing I'm like this ticker-tape of possible ideas and endings and transitions and and and things I want to quote from other books that I'm jealous and bitter about not having written myself and and Sam is articulate but he's got that spatial sort of intelligence where he can see things that either don't exist yet or that don't show like the far side of a pyramid and it's I think where did you get that because his dad's much more like me very verbal and a word oriented but anyway so yeah he interned for a couple months and he got a job and so now where does Jack shade up on the Jack's excuse me on the continuum of words and spatial and well he's actually does everybody make the jack mistake a lot of people make the jack mistake so I'm always saying Jay ax but of course one horrible thing you find out where your grandparent is they are so uninterested in your thoughts on things and on your opinions of like names and this child is going to go through life going J ax like we did I went in a man with an e and within a year and without me and you go through I've cyan without me and with an E and with a so yeah it's J ax but he'd they all live in the same county now and he he's really both parents because and he's got my sense of humor which I love which is to say it's just endlessly kind of stupid and and I'll never stop like if you accidentally laugh it just encourages me and and it'll encourage Jax and then we'll hear in this sample shot from the other book room you both need some new material yeah because I'll say hey Jax would you like a pair of boots like a bowl of honey bunches of socks oh nana oh my god soldier cause I got some honey bunches of underwear oh my god Sam's in there just crying I just wasn't gonna kill my that Jax will do the same thing so and then he's very very faint in Sam house where he can take one of Sam's teachers said in third grade he says Sanders takes garbage and make stuff out of it because what he might have he might have he I could give him my beads and there could be a pop top from a soda can and there could be some leftover paper poppin pit you know from paper making holes in paper and there could be a piece of a bent paperclip and Jay and Sam would sir I was at Jack's ago doodle it and then if you gave him a 9-volt battery headed to move and a paperclip and it would tail the beads and you would just go oh my god so he has that but it also he has me savage reader and Lamont from grandmother so he's also a savage reader and his mother's just as darling bubbly four foot nine person who's just kind of springy and I am like so not springy like my feet hurt my back hurts and I'm I never I would say one word you'll never hear anyone say about me as springy and uh don't you look at them I mean as much as you think boy it would have been nice if they had been a little older you've got to look at them and think that is probably biologically the time we should be having kids I mean what kids know he has a little dog it's not the same no it's not the same yeah people always say lyric that's your baby and I'm like actually that's my bike totally get that it's very different but but that energy that you have at 19 and 20 now or you can wake up every 2 or 3 hours and go back to sleep but the thing is there's they were still wasted they were still sick it's gonna still destroy you physically and I think you mean they were like people were 14 and 15 right when they're having babies think yours was have babies at 14 and 15 but even 19 and 20 year old people they the babies wake up every two hours and at first and and they were so on beyond zebra in their exhaustion their crab enos it's no one is meant to do that I mean you to do that you requires drugs let's just be honest and um they didn't then a actually Sam's clean and sober too like me and so I don't think there's an agent which it is easy or that you're okay and then all of a sudden it gets a little bit better then their tummies get bigger and they can hold enough milk to get through the night then you start to like them again well that's you've just destroyed my whole mythology of go teenage pregnancy that just yeah okay all right yeah no all parents are exhausted almost all the time and all parents are scared it's just true right if you're being honest all parents are exhausted a lot of the time and all parents are scared a lot of the time to be a parent means you've drawn your last complacent breath look it and there's there's one now where's a parent in the back yeah yeah um top talk about you these are all the questions people ask you but why not let's I always say book tour is just acting you act surprised and pleased every time the person asks you that question you've been asked for the last 20 night you fix your face to be like wow that's smart that's an interesting is such an interesting question so um who are you who are you with operating instructions as a writer as opposed to who you are now as a writer I mean I know personally you're very different but but as a writer and how have you changed because that's got to be a real interesting book in to look at these experiences well I think you've written the sequel I did write the sequel but you know I'm sure this is true of you because I'm sure it's true of all almost all writers if you see some stuff against all odds you see some structure somewhere it's like oh my god I can't believe it there's structure there's meaning here and so it was a book and and I didn't actually really want to write it my editor wanted me to write it and Sam was into it because he writes a preface and some assembly about how much it meant to him to read this book over the years cuz it's so much about my heart he really was like my outside heart and and he wanted to be able to give that to Jax too and I didn't want to do it cuz I thought it'd be exploitive which is another question I that comes up a lot and my editor said what wouldn't be exploitive if he didn't exploit anyone which hadn't actually occurred to me and then and then another thing you know I wrote this piece on salon about being a match which is magic combs like they're single that's what we were talking about it yeah the single most heroic thing I've ever done but the thing was I wanted to put something out to kind of promote I know I can't think of it some assembly required but I wanted me to write pieces with significance and like about being a feminist and about the chain you know indefinitely and I all of a sudden realize it was almost to the day the end of the first year and the first and last year for now and I thought I mean how often do you find structure in something that you're gonna be fine structure by doing it and by being mentally ill for two years while you wait for the structure right to reveal itself right mostly and so with the salon piece I just was blown away and then with some assembly also thought oh this is really this is a very unusual thing for to be able to do to write a book with your son who's 19 who is the reason that the book is going to exist not just because he's living it because he wants it because it turns out like teenagers every so often forget to mention the stuff about you that they don't hate you know the stuff that is not a complete humiliation about having you as a parent and so when he had a child he when in fact when he was pregnant he just got it that the hardship it had been in the sacrifice it means you give up your plans it means you give up a lot of your dreams especially if you're young and it might be that your dream was to have a child so you're getting a dream but at the same time it means um Sam said like what am I gonna do my bachelorhood and I thought about all those demonstrations I did with the bananas and the condoms is how you slept through that is how you take it out of the foil and um when am I gonna do my bachelorhood so you knew you you didn't back right you knew going in that you were gonna write this book you knew it pregnancy you were gonna write this Ami's but no I didn't at all I knew right before they delivered the academic my editor came to me and asked and um because by then it was so clear they they just want to separate from you I mean if you've done a decent job as a parent you've raised someone to leave you if you've done a healthy job you've grown them to leave you it's just a nightmare it's just a nightmare cuz it's okay if they leave it then you should get to go with them and and then be with them and it would be so fun you think you know and you want to because if you have maybe a tiny tendency towards codependence you want to walk their hero's journey with them and bring them things like um have snacks for them and you know and chapstick right and for Beowulf's mother you know and they don't wanna you know they do and they don't but they're very sharp about explaining to you it's not your kid it's not your kid and butt out and so then when my editor pitched this idea and Sam was really into it it was kind of a price and then I thought well you know how sometimes you have something it doesn't quite pan out you do it for like a month and a half and then you realize you're just really you're doing the opposite of surrender and breath you're doing shove and clinch and you have to let go and so I thought well I'll do it for a month and if I'm in shove and clinch I don't want to do it to make salmon my head etre happy and and all of a sudden then I was sort of hooked again because I got did say Pete two people I'm in the middle of something but it was actually just journal entries yeah and amy was okay with it name is okay with it even the get-go how do you feel about Sally man why you can't remember then the photographer oh yeah well I found it um kind of shocking but um the photographs of her daughter's naked um I found it kind of shocking but um because I have such a terror in me of men abusing women and of men seeing little girls and men abusing girls she doesn't make it pictures of her son - yeah yeah that's right but the thing is like the intimacy of life and what's really beautiful cuz there's a beautiful terrifying and I'm totally with you but when you were talking about all this I was suddenly thinking about Sally man and thinking you know that with all of her kids there came a day that they were like not - no more mom you know no I'm putting my clothes on we're not doing this anymore and in fact there's one really famous picture of her son standing in a creek and it's like this is the last picture George let me take of him naked and and and is there that moment with with Sam or with Amy or you know where they're like not this not this you don't talk like you know I took out 90% of what happened I'm no that's what we that's what we went like here about you today um no you're not stupid but we're interested yeah I mean I've always because of all was written about my family I've always had to really toad the line I've always had to really make sure that I wasn't saying anything that would be hurtful or mortifying for anyone and I've always been very very careful to not expose stuff about salmon and to sorting by about 9 or 10 to run it by him and you know it's funny that I wrote a piece I think it's in plan B but it could be in grace eventually called heat about the one time I slapped him and he was sixteen believe me he deserved it Jesus would have slapped Jesus honestly with us often and and he was so awful and I you lose it and that's just something parents don't talk about is that you lose it sometimes and I slapped him and and then I asked him if I could write about it because it ends up that I slapped him and it was like a Buddhist a bad Buddhist gong it was like the world cracked open it was so awful but then we ended up like I cried a lot I realized that I should never have had children and that I was the worst mother on earth and in somebody at Salons ended up saying I was no better than the pedophile priests okay but anyway before I got without faces I cried and cried I felt awful but I also felt like I'm um what he doesn't need is for me to make his behavior seemed like it was okay which it hadn't been and so I did what I do a lot of the time as I got the animals and took a nap on the couch with a little blankie and um and when I woke up he was on the other couch taking up also so I thought that's a miracle because I didn't go after him to try to get him to see things my way there's an acronym in some assembly of wait why am I talking w AIT and so often for me it's about going Zipp you know zip if don't talk because I want to fix and I want to rescue and I want it to come out good and that's not helpful for anybody it really isn't helpful for anybody and so I wrote the story up and I gave it to him and he came into my office and he said I hate it you made me look like the crazy one and the thing was I had and I looked sort of victimized which is my preferred role it's I wrote it as true as I could and then he loved it and then I sent it in and and they published it the next day and I immediately got eight or nine of the most hostile letters I've ever seen in my life just the two pretty vicious letters and they'd never done that before they'd always shown me letters that always mostly run friendly letters they edited on before and they didn't this time when I was so ambushed I just fell to pieces and Sam said what's David's email address that was my editor at the time and he sat down he said this is Sam Wilmot you Meyer and then he said my mother quits Anna and I said go ahead and send it and then a couple days later said take me back take me back but I don't like surprises you know I'm really this earth has not been a good match for me since it's mostly okay what's interesting there are 10 things that are interesting to me about that story but one of them is you read the letters oh yeah do you read your Amazon do you I don't read an Amazon so much but I do read salon sometimes and I skip around but now I find and I get the troll letter surgeon you don't read any nothing nothing good for you see I think you're very grown-up so you know the best piece of it I used to read this was a long time ago but I used to read the Amazon reviews yeah so you know there are a lot of them that say things like somebody take this woman out into a field and shoot her enough already it is so terrible these are the worst books they're Anna and and I couldn't stop it was like something I was picking at and my friend Elizabeth McCracken said pick the most unassailable book you can think of you know pink The Great Gatsby whatever and go read the Amazon reviews go read the Edwidge Danticat Amazon reviews and they were just like mine I mean they were just hateful and sick and horrible and I really thought oh you know enough but that's been one of my number one keys to good mental how is do never look and that goes with inner I'll read reviews although they're boring I'll never read an interview and those letters at the end of salon mmm-hmm oh yeah I know I just I get hooked on them you know it's like Cobra hypnosis you know you just start reading I guess but they're almost all good most letters are positive because and they don't matter the good ones yeah they don't matter so much every soften one matters but damn same with Facebook you don't have a Facebook page well I started writing essays on Facebook about a year ago I got intimidated into doing it by my thank you by my editor because it's really the new world is Facebook and Twitter and I certainly I do Jesus my life yeah it's my life I love it so much I was saved by people's Twitter's during the election too I have to say and so of course because of all parents are just a humiliation and an embarrassment to their kids sandwich just mortified by my first efforts and by the fact I couldn't really do it he grabs things out of my hands he says I hate to watch you try to do things and huh and little by little I got this real following and I loved I loved it I loved having feedback now if you've read my facebook stuff you'll know that 95% of them are just like love letters like thank you this is great I know exactly we're talking about and then you get these trolls and it's so bizarre and you have to ask yourself it's the same was like why would you read and patch its book if you don't like and patch its other books like why are you here to be surprised by how much I hate it all over again and so people will say something like god I hate her Christianity or oh I hate her politics and I think why are you here little man and then but then I've also learned to block and I become a total Twitter blocker bye-bye like don't come into my house don't we we don't want you except for during the election people would say society also as a feminist as somebody who is so passionately on the side of women's rights and especially abortion rights I feel like to have a public voice even it's gonna be torn down at Facebook and Twitter by the right I feel it so important just to say it anyway just to say this is crazy there I said it this is crazy get out there and help people get a registered register register so that's why I'm going to do what am I going to do in the faces on your registered voters that's why we do it so we always did so I feel like it's important for people with some measure of Fame on these very very these issues that are so huge to me to take a stand and to say listen young women we fought for you to have the freedom of choice and our backs heard and our feet hurt and we need you to look around and maybe girls you know who've gotten pregnant and didn't have to bring a baby to term because they live in the modern era of civil rights and if you do care then mobilize mobilize because our feet also hurt and our vision is failing and it is going to fill you in a way that nothing that you think is going to fill you the new boyfriend the new clothes nothing is going to work but your passion and doing the right thing and something that you don't have a lot of people like my work that are passionately pro-life and I don't delete people for being pro-life I do delete people to beautiful fasts holes um there god I just don't get any of it I just I just don't live in that world at all where do you find the time well I think probably one thing that's different is it had a teenager you know and and so that it's such it's such an employee that makes a lot of sense actually because when I've never texted and people say well it's the only way I can communicate with my children and I say well I don't have children so it's just a problem yeah and tell me what your sense of privacy is and and I am really interested in this because I have a very peculiar sense of privacy well I have the most private and quiet and dumb life of anyone I know and I have fought to spend most I spend most of my time fighting to not give my time away I say no to everything and then I go and book to her you know and um I do some lectures every year and I need to make a living you know I have a family that is dependent on me and I'm dependent on me and I'm gonna be Humber be retired soon and would I excuse me you're gonna be retired yeah I hope so what does that mean you're gonna stop typing I am I would love to stop doing big publishing house publication and book tour I've been doing it for 35 years yeah I mean this is my 14th book I feel like I've shown up and I paid and anyway I don't want to become one of those old writers old lady writers that write something to keep keep writing and I think that it's possible that that could help people come up with the next book that they could write I want to just write when I feel this thing on my heart that oh my god wait a minute I might I think I'm having a good idea wait a second wet if the question all writers ask themselves what if so I am sad doesn't retire I am I think it might okay yeah I'm thinking might I don't I don't want to do this not much longer I've been doing it full-time for a very long time and so of you but I've got ten years on you and I also accidentally did to book tours last year because I published two books and the second book was a complete accident I hadn't planned to write it hadn't seen it coming didn't think of it but anyway so my privacy is that no one in the rent mine would ever draw I get very few phone calls which I love I have as you know from reading my books I have like the three or four absolutely intimate bosom buddies so at least called bosom buddy buddies I talked to them on the phone and I I write I get a few hours work done five days a week I have two dogs and they're kind of I mean that's just so time intensive to have dogs it's so funny we it's I have these two dogs and they're kind of my life they're my favorite thing about life but really I have a cat but not so much work and then I know right a few hours I take a nap every afternoon I'm a person who needs 45-minute nap I'm read like you do I just always am reading it's like the Stations of the Cross at my house the different rooms and couches I read out I read this here I would never read The New Yorker in bed like you've never texted I'm not positive in the last 20 years I've read The New Yorker in bed are you read The New Yorker on the couch right and um do you read multiple books at the same time hmm what are you reading new I just got this book for the book tour it's I'm not I'm not swayed it's been getting a lot of attention it's called reconstructing Amelia and I supposed to be the new gone girl which was a perfect book tour book and it's about a girl who it's this kind of a literary thriller just came out yesterday but I saw I got it yesterday at the airport in San Francisco and but I usually have several books going there's a what if I read most recently I read what people thrust at me don't you don't you have to read this I try not to blur very many books if someone is close or if they're really struggling for something that I'm passionate about I want to give them a blur but you know what it's like in one book and sometimes two books come every single to every day and every single day somebody wants to know if you can help just read one story if you could just read like 15 pages and I throw it all out I want to warn you if you give me something to read I will bless it in a woman it will not be leaving Nashville so it will not make it as far as Kansas City because I have fighting tooth and nail for my life for my privacy I want to be alone a lot of the time I don't want to read stuff I want to read the stuff I pick there's so much I want to read you know what I just got this is funny um when I was a young writer like hit 22 probably or 23 that um Renata Adler book speed boat came out hmm Oh God and it was so life-giving did you ever read them yeah and because it was somebody who was my our voice snarks snappy and kicky and snarky and kind of slightly pissed off and brilliant and where I had formerly brilliant and high in my case and um and it was short takes and it was an interconnected pieces of work that formed a novel of sources novel ish enough for me and I'd also read one of my dad's best friend was Evan canal who'd written mrs. bridge and married I and I grew up with Evan canal you know I just read the Sun of the Morning Sun or stars one of the great books in the left-half in the world and um so he I'd read mrs. bridge - about 15 it was really short chapters it seemed amazing I know and he was the first man I wanted to marry is that while that's a good choice yeah well he was so handsome I mean women lined up lined up anyway I just wanted saw him two years ago and he just passed a couple months ago I went so I'm in Santa Fe but anyway he gave you the idea that there were different forms in which a novel could be written and that Renata Adler book gave me that same idea that and that you could just say it and it wasn't that it might not be very feminine that if it was funny and smart there were a lot of us that were just starving it was gonna nourish us and we were gonna voice this book into other people's hands so I just got um the book about the last heard days at The New Yorker where that it's very gossipy it's like totally elitist gossip it's like National Enquirer for The New Yorker so you know it's good Ossipee it's about mister you know wit Wallace Shawn and and what's-her-name it he was married to all those years the great writer that he wasn't really married to he had a wife but he lived with right right Lillian uh uh audience Lillian you know who we're talking to I mean he had a really solid marriage with her for 25 years but he was his wife wouldn't divorce him and it was all about the drinking all this the dark shadowy stuff which I just love just like Tomorrow People magazine comes out you all knew that but but I will be at the airport and I will have that 20 minutes where you can't read on your iPad and I will have the new People magazine so anyway so I'm read I just started that Renata Adler and I just brought my whole life back and then um I usually what are you reading right now wave oh is it great yeah it's almost about it's worth it it is it's and I read the review in the time Cheryl Strayed wrote the review in the New York Times and um it was such a compelling review and I thought oh I'm not gonna read this I'm not going to read this and I couldn't stop thinking about it and I went and got it it's about a woman who lost her parents her husband and her two small sons in the tsunami in Indonesia and it's written with a level of fury that is it's electric she hates life hates everyone hates the world is furious everything and it's so it's so intense it's so bright not like anything and Joan Didion blurbed it Wow because that's not surprising cuz she's kind of had this soon we had her too yeah but but how generous did the book found her and that she said oh yeah yeah give this a try I also just read this fantastic sorrowful book called Stations of the heart and I can't remember the author's name it's not out now but it's out next month and it's about a father who's a former minister who has a perfect 33 year-old son whose wife is pregnant and who has had melanoma but he's flying any symptom-free and he gets the bad phone call he gets a phone call that says not only has your melanoma returned but it is everywhere that there is a place where melanoma could grow you have it there and in fact it's going to die very soon as 33 it's a perfect person and it is a book of such joy and such love and such humor and such wisdom and it's like a candle to see why it's called stations of the heart and god i loved it i ended up blurbing that that's really interesting i'll look for that that's a nice thing about having a bookstore I can think oh that's great I can yeah I can sell that yeah yeah do you are you at the book store very often um in and out mm-hmm not for long mm-hmm Darden Darden any time I walk in there a group of people from Ohio who say we drove down here to see you uh-huh and I think not my fault what are that you know I'm really I'm so happy to see you but did you really think I was gonna be here I mean I just came in to pick up a book and get my mail and so it it terrifies me a little bit um okay I want to be sure to be aware of the time and get to the Liz Coleman questions you write very beautifully about being a pilgrim and you write about your faults and your backsliding of trying to be the person that you want to be and and yet you're so regarded as the guru at you know shake your head all you want but but people really feel that for you they don't they don't seem to feel like Annie I'm walking beside you on your path it's like Annie I'm walking towards you on my path and how am I don't get don't I don't get that what I get is you really have helped me when I was at a very bad place yeah so I like when you first said that I thought boy does that really not ring a bell and that's just you know whenever I've said people like what are you doing I'm interviewing anyone or anyone what you know I just I've been getting that from people when I say this is what I'm doing tonight huh so maybe that's just a small group of people in Nashville who feel that way about you I can say two things that I think are true and they apply to you also they really applied to patron saint my first and patch it 20 years ago so 20 years ago more yes it really it was 92 so 21 yeah yeah which I reviewed from Mademoiselle isn't that funny yeah so my 30s when I got this gig writing the book column and it paid my bills as a mother with a little baby but um when I read that book I felt personally relieved that someone was telling the truth about tough stuff about people that were really in up their necks in meth and if somebody will write about the mass and have a sense of humor I'm in I'm so relieved and I'm and I think people people before me people I think had tried to look really good as parents because there was so much pressure to be a perfect parent and there is still to some extent but there's been me and then there you know there been a lot of people bring the curve down yeah yeah but it's because it's really naturally funny stuff but you don't want to look like you are ever bored even for an hour after an 18-hour day with a colicky baby god forbid or that it turns out by god you ever got out and never raised my voice slider baby I was 35 when I had a child and I had never raised my voice like you've never texted never really yeah and I discovered at 35 with a colicky baby that I was a tiny bit angry and and so when I said how angry you get and I also said if you need to get help get help because every single person is feeling this you're not a freak and I talked about being angry I talked about being scared to death a lot how you watch your kids sleep because they're so fragile and and I started telling it's just like I said in operating instructions that I had been thinking about wrapping bundling Sam up and putting him outside for just like one night he was like two or three months old because I was so tired and I felt like the best thing I could do for Sam was to get one night's sleep and every mother every parent has thought that but mostly hadn't been said so when I said it when I wrote about it I got a lot of credit for coming out of that closet that boy is it does it get real when you have a child boy does it get real boys get real when you have a teenager did you go back and read operating instructions again when you were writing some assembly no I don't think I did that I'm like you I don't read my stuff with any I kind of recoil like ah yeah I don't want to read it and it doesn't bring me pleasure and uh I did read bird by bird because people said oh it's really it's such a so good it's so good help me so to my writing I went back and I don't think it's a very interesting I mean I mean it's so down to earth it's so this is what we are all doing we're sitting down we never actually feel like sitting down we don't love it a lot of days it's hard more often than it's easy but we do it because it's some sort of calling like a call to the monastery to be a writer or a poet and no one cares if you do it so you better you better care if you do this has helped this doesn't help don't bother with that publishing is gonna make you more mentally ill you already are that is not where the the juice is the juice is going to be in the discipline the discipline is going to give you freedom the discipline is going to give you something you're looking for you believe you for your whole life it's going to be there and it's not going to go well a lot of the time now this has helped me someone said this verb Ebersole oh I remember Shirley Jackson said a confused reader is an antagonistic reader well that's really good that's a great slogan that if someone's confused I can't stand to be confused as a reader and when I was young I would agree to read like postmodern German novels or Peter honky or some weird new Japanese poet I'm tired and I don't want to get in bed I have a good hour before I zone out and I wonder I want you to tell me a story tell me a story it's fine if it's 15 pages tell me I want to know about the dog you know I want to know about pretty Judy tell me the story of finding your best year three or four your three best friends I love stories where we're a species that is fed and enlivened by stories and chapter books and so um I don't want to be confused and so when I read first read that was 30 or 40 years ago remember that Flannery O'Connor book I bet you read um of essays it was called something and mysteries mastery manners and had peacocks on the cover god there's so much amazing stuff in there and I loved her she shaped me you know she was so important to me when I was a girl and um and so to be able to turn people on to that order and people on to Brenda you and trim people on to Lynn freed or anybody that is writing about writing it helps you unscanned stuck and I think somehow I think bird by bird is not profound I don't think I have many more interesting thoughts I don't have interesting theological thoughts but I can tell you what it's like for me and some days are just too long and you know and what helps me is being with other people who are doing what I'm doing or searching for and searching for or have gotten somewhere have been where I've been and found out this was useful this wasn't don't bother it's not there it's very shiny bright nothing there's no food there and so I think that that might be why people I would argue that they don't think I'm a guru but they do feel like I've been this kind of strange disembodied presence at very hard times in their lives that's beautiful and did you read the Jeanette Winterson book called written on the body no I don't I hated that book so no I hated that book why did you hate it because you don't know if the narrator is a man or a woman and it's the whole trick of the book and I kept thinking don't use my energy this way as a you know don't don't confuse me for no reason right it's sad what you're getting precious hours of my life put them to good use anyway um fiction fiction or nonfiction where do you weigh in on what I want to write yeah I want to read no no I'm fiction it's so much easier to write so much so much I always say it's like Tara Lipinsky skating figure eights I know I know it's so much easier and I love nonfiction yeah that was a girl who was saved by fiction so I when push comes to shove if I had if you were gonna force me like when they say when people little kids I'll say okay if your mother or father was gonna die you had to pick one if the house is burning down and you had only taken a fiction beyond fiction right if you don't think um I altum Utley will always want a great novel a great novel for me as a sacred object and it is where I got found and it is where I have found the light and it is where I have been able to laugh at myself and where I've been able to breathe again and where I have cried myself into a state of healing and hydration and and then yet I read as much nonfiction as I do but for writing your writing she's so much easier and like a my intention is not to write anymore novels I've written seven seven or eight that's a lot of No oh oh just the fact that you said seven or eight makes you sound like Joyce Carol Oates oh alright man I don't know what was it seven or eight I think might be a tie on see I'm not positive but like Joyce Carol oh no I mean was just a joke addy I didn't mean it I mean that's a disorder but I love some of her books - no no it's true he really admires she wrote a little less she'd be our greatest writer yeah she would be yes well what okay I want to pay you a compliment which is um you are brilliant at endings I think if it's a chapter if it's an essay if it's a book you're like the little Russian gymnast and every time you do this not really you know little bit and then you stick the landing every time you stick it um really gorgeous and and I was just wondering is there a thing that you're proud of in your work that you think yeah you know what I I do this really I do this well the thing about everything I write and endings especially is that everything seems like it was Nadia Comaneci and everything takes me forever I write endless drafts every ending of love every ending even my facebook stuff like I just posted something about being in Nashville and the snake situation in the end the googoo clusters and now how I'm kind of trying to fend off babies Jake thro the Google+ turkeys Nick yeah they get it yeah yeah your throat that's such a great idea um and everything takes me so long nothing comes naturally to me and even the journals Ayana if I sit down to write what happened yesterday I write and I write way too long always and the thing is I would say about myself and this sounds really arrogant it's I think I have a good sense of humor and I got a good sense of humor because I was so bizarre as a child so bullied for my hair and I was such a you must have been also a skinny little girl you so I wait literally eight pounds until I was ten I wait only eight pounds that's so funny I thought it was the same yeah and I mean I never got picked for the team's because it just made sense who would pick an eight pound person year old to play volleyball I know I weighed less than two volleyball I know I know I know and I mean people had pantyhose in seventh grade that weighed more than I did they really did and and I got bullied a lot because of my hair and because the women's movement hadn't happened and that was a source of salvation chapbooks it goes chap books poetry the women's movement when I'm 16 15 16 but I do think I have a good sense of humor and but to get something right on the page and to sound like somebody who with a naturally good sense of humor takes me several drafts I overwrite everything I try too hard I want people to see how adorable I am because I don't want them to think I'm depressed or I have a lot of problems so and I'll always over write in the interest of seeming to be a very nonchalant person obviously no one has ever mistaken me for a nonchalant person right I take life very seriously I take suffering very seriously my Onan in the world and that was one of the reasons childhood was so terrible and I grew up around a lot of drinking and stuff and if your child around alcohol you grow up not seeing what's there because you agree not to see what's going on because it is terrible for the parents for you to say or think that they are in trouble which first of all means a family's not going to survive but also it's kind of disgraceful some of the behavior and I certainly did my own for a total of 32 when I got sober but you learn not to see what's going on and oh my god I forgot where that question started it had something to do with being a child having a sense of humor would you do suffering very see I understood it did about India at six years old I could not go to the pound with a family to pick out animals because I would I got it because you girlfriend alcohol's what you're paying too much attention first of all you're paying attention not seeing what's going on but you're paying very careful attention because it's life and death so you go to the pound you're six years old you weigh eight pounds and you're going oh wait but to do all the dogs fright oh yeah well somebody be here for all the other dogs later yeah and then all the Disney movies you ever see they take the mother dog out usually at then and have to shoot her or the mother animal whatever species is going to die at the end and I know there was a book that came out when I was at a child maybe I was eight or nine and it was the book about that set on the back by the time you've read this paragraph a 2250 Indian children will have died of starvation right well my parents were do-gooders and they were left when I come by this honestly and they were movers and groomers for the common good remember those of you from the 50s remember you could use the phrase the common good remember in the 50s you could use the word fair and we all know what fair mat and then it was the 60 C people said now when I understand where I am pressing to be fair we all know what Farris and the fifties you could use fair and you could talk about the common good and I understood about India and I agreed for the children on the book of that cover you should read quiet by Susan Cain have you read this the book about intervals been following up it don't read it all or read it quickly it's one of those books that should just have been a really really long New Yorker article but there's a lot in there about your childhood you will appreciate it I've got to ask you some of these Liz Coleman collectors ask a couple okay um what part of writing do you love and what do you dread I love when you get to it like a third draft because the first draft is pulling teeth and it is always too long right and it's - it's a third again or half again too long I under write you do and I have to go back yes your flesh it always I write like condensed orange juice and I have to work the water in huh yeah oh that's so funny oh I'm glad to know that that's interesting I'm not that way I'm the opposite and four and then second trapped you can get it much better but then you have that sinking feeling of oh god is this what I was after but when I get to the third draft that's when it's more like a craft it's like the Swiss watchmaker with a little teeny teeny instruments I know you're working with stuff in your movie so and also you get that boldness to take some stuff out and you realize you loved it at the time but it actually goes in a whole nother piece and so to get to the point where you're willing to cut some of your own work to me you fight for that because it's so hard to cut your own stuff and then you know third draft oh and then right before you send it in you go over it again you end up with that extra week where you don't send it in because you're just kind of are getting it finally and you have that one week to me that's what Heaven's gonna be like here we do the ones that you catch ill I really have to pee as partly oh I want to go but who is your favorite writer besides and Pat that's not on that cart that is a little favorite writer beside and passionate what book changed your life you know so many books when I was in all those chapter books you know Elysium that no not I didn't get into Nancy Drew but I loved Pippi Longstocking which came out well that was before I was six and six is chapter book six is first grade right and I could read I was like everyone it's a really early reader Pippi longstockings came out and I was gonna be okay Beezus and Ramona I thought were very funny and trying well we read everything by Louisa May Alcott in the 50s your parents read you Robert Louis Stevenson said honey and it was all stories these stories like us one story tell me a story we read the author's gonna bring you to the campfire and like you said earlier you should you get to trust if they have a story to tell you they got you to come sit with them at the campfire tell me the damn story and that was so 50s and 60s yeah so many wolf stories when I read um Lobo a lot of Jack London and horse did you read that a lot of like all of them yeah bum all of them and I wasn't such a horse girl I read all of them just wept I've so many books just changed my life profoundly Kurt Vonnegut when I was like 13 started to make me feel very excited about that voice within me of being crushed and injured pretty much a ruined person because I do believe we're all pretty ruined and loved beyond all sense of proportion but that voice of ruin that was funny and so human a human is so caring and I got that with one I get you know I could strange you'll enough always like Doris Lessing because my mom was from England and loved and so I got out of English women in my teens Muriel Spark who said the most awful thing I've ever heard though and I sort of turned on her she said that writing came so easily to her that it was like having a dictaphone headset on like if that's your experience why would you say that you know why would you say that out loud I always loved et Cummings I always loved you ecomes I got Langston Hughes I remember the day instead of three because you have the perfect little hands I do as little I'm happy Cummings yes no no one not even the wind has such that's exactly right yeah he's funny little hands are my mom's but um okay Nikki just came and waved at me and and said okay let's leave her it up with the questions okay at least screwed up tonight I've not my fault and it's you know what I always think like when people come to your store thinking they'll see you I think this is not my fault it's not I didn't say I would be there or work on the question part and it's not my problem but she has gotten through a lot of questions and they're the questions you have asked anyway um what let's see what are you reading now what is your advice for people who want to write okay you know I'd use a lie do talks ten times a year um and I'm either asked to talk about writing or faith right there a lot most incident I don't know about and and if I bring the wrong notes if I bring the writing notes for the faith talk it doesn't matter because they're exactly the same thing I can tell you everything I can literally tell you almost everything I know about everything in 45 minutes so with a couple minutes left I can tell you that you take little bits of pieces of things you take little bits of understanding it's okay to meditate for seven minutes to meditate meditate for seven minutes huge just to write one passage when you have finished that passage and it's not what you were after and it needs a lot of work but you know exactly what I mean you go thank you oh my god because something exists that wasn't there before I sure - Simon's bird by bird that bird by bird story it was that my I was a perfect student my whole life and my older brother John was the world's worst student and in California you write two papers in fourth grade which is when you first write real papers because third grade you might still be getting lined paper to illustrate right but in fourth grade you have to learn to write a real paper in California it's on Sacramento our capitol of course and birds and so you have a semester to write my brother hadn't started the the the weekend before it was due and he sat down with my writer my dad was a writer and it was crying cuz it was your bird paper right and you were you know you were probably not gonna go to college and he was crying and my dad said just take it bird by bird and he said just read about pelicans and then tell me in your own words about pelicans and that's what you're doing I say tell me about marriage just tell me in your own words about marriage just tell me your version of things that's why you have to offer me probably you know and that's all I have to offer you is what I make of it all in my own voice I don't love my own voice my son thinks have a speech impediment when I'm speaking out loud and he thinks I've done really well even and I love everybody else's voice better I love Katherine blue I love that Bluebook last year on beyond the beautiful forevers so much I love Elizabeth Burt us strout's so who do I love do I live the Burgess voice is the title thing I'm on jetlag yeah I love Elizabeth's trout so much I love you so much I love your work so much come back next week on Monday for me yeah I won't know you oh she may okay right seriously be careful this drought it's gonna be really good so and everybody that you love is taking a bird by bird they're telling what they can figure out about this cleared labyrinth of life of loss of joy of connection of isolation as best they can little by little and the second thing I know about it all is it's not going to go that well a lot of the time and you write really a really shitty first draft and the way you find out who your characters are is by hanging with them for a year and you want them to say and do certain things because you have great lines to accommodate that or you heard someone say or you thought up something and if you're being true to these people they may may not have ever said anything that wouldn't be true to them and it go that says and the main thing is they stop what you're doing and you you stop hitting the snooze button and you agree to the awakening you agree since you've wanted to be a writer your whole life and you were good in college and you always want to do it again you stopped not doing it you've always been a good serie of a beautiful voice you always thought you'd be on stage but you join the choir and there's 25 of you and it's unbelievable and you're doing it again in your 63 and you're making a dream happen you've opened your heart because all of us are very tempted here to close our heart because it's very hard here and what every single religious tradition teaches you is open back up breathe a little it's going to hurt at first it's very hard to follow your breath everybody when they're learning to volley breath goes coming but it is oh my god did I leave the burners on no wait I'm in a hotel so I don't have to worry about to burn and I'm wondering if they're so and then you start again you have a nice mantra I can tell you the greatest mantra ever heard in my life though it's in some assembly it's I love an arm cable um baba nam kevalam I walked in the house it's an absolute it you'll end up doing it and in cars baba nam kevalam and what it's from an ashram on the peninsula south of San Francisco and what it means is it's only about love there's only love you are loved you're made of love your love for love your ear for love your to be loved you're here to give love you're here to give the light of love just do the love just try to look for it find some love it's just baba nam kevalam baba nam kevalam and and so but you got to stop for us and and a note notice how not present you are how not immediate the world is feeling right now because you're doing multitasking or you're doing too much too quickly you're carrying too much Sam said to me once when I was running to a lecture spilling things papers had this purse with stuff like fibber McGee purse Sam was eight or nine as God as my witness and he said you're carrying too much and you're going too fast and that is what the awakening is you're carrying too much you're going too fast what can you say no to what can you stop doing so you can have an hour to write every day what do you no longer agree to do so that you can have a 20-minute morning without having to get up at twenty minutes earlier what can you take back that you agreed earlier before you have the awakening to do that it turns out you're not going to be able to do and so it's like you stop he's like like the roadrunner you know you screech to a stop and you realize no one here no one in this room or in the spillover loops not one of you know you'll still be alive in June you don't have the kind of time you have so you decide you agree to have an awakening oh it's gonna be scary I'm in and then you start where you are you just take a very small piece of it you let yourself do it badly you make more mistakes more messes more failure if you fall on your butt you just don't have the command time you think you do but you have you're here and you have it now and like go get oh right no I only said that because I used to teach writing and every single person I taught spent most of their time with me explain why they weren't going to actually be able to get that much writing done until and I said you know my friend Pammy the most important thing I ever heard was when she was dying she was 37 I was trying on a cute dress for the current boyfriend she was two weeks away from dying with a two year old baby and I said do this dress dress make me look big in the hips and she said Andy you don't have that kind of time and so I say that to you tonight you know that kind of time so that's good to know right so anyway thank you you

Channel: Nashville Public Library

Views: 46,719

Rating: 4.7706094 out of 5

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Id: MQJoe-yL_x8

Length: 65min 7sec (3907 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 14 2013