Bye Bye, Anne Lamott Month

Being December 31st, it's time for me to sum up Anne Lamott Month--what worked for me, what didn't. There were two things that made December especially challenging. One was Christmas and having guests at the house for a week. It seems that no matter how hard I try, I never keep my resolutions to write every day during holidays. The second was the fatigue following National Novel Writing Month. I need a week or two away from writing altogether after the frenzy of NaNoWriMo.

For those reasons and others, I don't feel like I spent much time on Anne Lamott's writing advice. Here are pieces of her advice that I like and will try to continue (or start) doing in the future:

1. Write a little every day.

This month, I've learned that days off can be good for creativity. I need time to recharge and just rest between projects. The danger is in taking days off to procrastinate because of fear or laziness. Days off for fatigue and celebration = good for me. Days off because I'm afraid my writing sucks = bad for me.

I do believe that a story gets away from me if I take frequent days off in the middle of writing it, so I will continue to write a bit every day on current projects unless my health or creative process demands something different.

2. It's much more fun to write based on characters than on a devised plot line.

This is a paraphrase. I think a project has more life in it when it's based on a character that seems real to me. Sometimes I do need the structure of an outline, but I want to continue to experiment with Lamott's way of letting characters and their relationship develop the plot.

3. Write "shitty first drafts".

This is a must. I would never finish any piece of writing if I didn't let myself write utterly boring, confusing, and lustreless drafts to begin. The problems can (and must) wait until the revision stage. Besides, this piece of advice lets me just go at it. Write whatever. Get something down on paper. And as Lamott and others point out, the act of writing is what we really crave and the only true, unblemished reward we'll get.

4. Write "short assignments".

I don't have to do this one consciously. I think it's something I do automatically when I start writing. I start at one particular place in the story and stop when I run out of steam, which is usually quite soon. If I've only been writing for a few minutes, I try to sit back for a few and get myself going on the next small section. Writing a whole chapter in one sitting is hard for me and something I do rarely.

5. Write the truth.

I think this is the most important piece, but I don't know exactly how to do it. It takes bravery and insight to write the truth in fiction. I know it when I come across it in someone else's book: It's that moment when I think, Oh my god, I know this character! Or, This has happened to me, this tiny instant of [blank]! How did she know to describe it that way?

Because writing the truth still seems like such a mysterious and difficult maneuver, I think I'll reread the chapter titled "Plot" in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I know at least one other Featured Author in this No Shame Novelist Project addresses the same topic, so it will be revisited.

After I reread that "Plot" chapter, I'll be moving on to the next featured author, Madeleine L'Engle.