Smells Like Moon

I've found a new way to avoid writing. 

It's this cool little atomizer that spritzes the screen of my smart phone and comes with a little chamois cloth that wipes away all the greasy schmears from finger swiping and other "gesture techniques".  I can get the screen really, really clean if I apply a little pressure, and a little time--or a lot of time, depending on how desperately I'm procrastinating at the moment.  There's no end to the amount of time one can fritter-away staring incredulously at the lovely, colorful display of all those apps (is it 10,00 or 100,000?), and of course one can always read about smart phones.  And, lucky for writers like me, until one becomes adept at using the frustratingly jumpy touch screen, sending text messages couldn't take longer.

Another thing I've been doing to avoid writing is reading about writing.  And I've discovered my disorder is not so unusual--I'm in good company as  Anne Lamott assures me in her book Bird By Bird.  If you haven't already read it (it was published in 1994!) you've got to get it.  It's an accumulation of all the advice she's ever given to writers in her college writing classes and professional workshops.

Mostly it's about how to get started, how to actually sit down, stop procrastinating and put your fingers on that keyboard!  She's hilarious.

And a great comfort to daydreamers like me.

She writes about how the number one question she gets from her students, even in the very first class, is "how do I get published."  She tells them this is the least of their worries; that  in all probability they will not ever be published; and that even if they are published, they will never get rich on it.  She's quite blunt and honest about this. She describes how jealousy can stop-up a writer's creativity.

Lamott spends a whole chapter talking about how most writers she knows are paranoid and insecure-- plagued with worrying that all their colleagues are conspiring against them and secretly getting ahead, professionally--the implication being that they (Lamott and her neurotic writer friiends) are being left behind.  She says you can be defeated by the paranoia, or use it as comic relief.  One of the several poems she uses in the book as poignant examples of her advice is this one by Phillip Lopate:

We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.

It goes on...

But I won't.

I do have to get down to writing. 

The book is worth reading more than once though, and I may read it again as soon as I finish it this time.

Oh, and the reference at the top of this posting to the moon?  It's in there.  It's something Lamott's son said, when he was about three.  It's an example of using our senses when writing.  I can't find the exact spot in the book where she describes this scene but if you give me another 1/2 hour or so I'd be happy to look for it.