Anne Lamott and Writer's Block

Wise words I keep coming back to whenever I'm in a rut

Getting there one step (one bird) at a time. Photo courtesy of Eder Pozo Pérez via Unsplash.

I’ll admit, I’ve got a bit of writer’s block this week. I’ve been staring at a blank page for what feels like ages, my fingers frozen over the keys. I’m again finding myself in the age-old trap of thinking too much about how what I write is going to land rather than just writing it. I’m caring too much about its reception versus its conception and it’s getting me in my own way.

I’d say that writing is tricky, but in reality it’s not, really. The tricky part is actually sharing – it’s the managing of expectations. Where writing is just for you, publishing is for other people. And as a chronic people pleaser, that is my kryptonite.¹ The second I start to think about other people, the more insecure I become. My mind swirls with with impossible hypotheticals.

What will they think?

What will they say?

What will they do?

And just like that, my creativity begins to recede under the dark shadow of fear like a turtle into its shell at the sight of a looming predator.

The crazy part is I know exactly what’s happening, yet I feel so powerless. Again and again I find myself in this situation, aware that I’m letting external forces intercept and impede my efforts but feeling unable (and possibly unwilling) to do anything about it.

It’s times like this where I have to remind myself of My Why:

Why do I want to write in the first place?

Why do I keep coming back to it?

Identifying My Why isn’t always easy and it can be even easier to forget, which is why (for lack of a better term), I sometimes lean on the wisdom of others.

I recently read Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott and nearly highlighted the entire book. I mean, just listen to this:

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”

“Cramped and insane” is exactly how I feel, especially as I meticulously try to hit every step perfectly like Anne illustrates. It’s like playing high-stakes hopscotch in a straight jacket.

When put to this visual, I do see the insanity in it. It’s a futile effort. What’s the point? Why do I do it? Better yet, if perfectionism is so counterintuitive, how and why does it exist in the first place?

You likely already know what I’m going to say, or rather, what I’m going to point the finger at. If you said “society,” you’d be right. In my defense, Anne said it first:

“Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friend. What people somehow (inadvertently, I’m sure) forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here—and, by extension, what we’re supposed to be writing.”

“People,” of course, is society. Anne is being somewhat facetious, but the core message is there: Society has somehow convinced us that we have to keep things neat and tidy, we have to keep ourselves “together,” no matter what. But as Anne says, falling apart, picking things apart, and making messes is how we learn about ourselves. It’s how we find our purpose. It’s how we have something to write about. It’s an exploratory endeavor, with many a twist and turn, not a clear-cut path. Anne has wise words there too:

“Writing is so often about making mistakes and feeling lost.”

In fact, she quotes E.L. Doctorow, who compares writing to driving at night:

“You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

It’s a potent reminder that you don’t have to know the destination, you just have to keep going. You just have to try. You have to put rubber to road, or pen to paper.

But what if what I’m writing is embarrassing? I constantly ask myself, fingers still hovering over the keys. What if it’s too emotional, too much? These questions naturally only perpetuate the writer’s block. To that, Anne says:

“Write toward vulnerability. Don’t worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this.”

When I think about all the books I’ve read or movies I’ve seen that I love, it’s not because they portray a perfect view of the world. It’s because they home in on something specific and crack it open, exposing it for what it is. It’s because they wade through the mire to find the meaning. More often than not, it’s because they move me, they make me feel something. And for that, they are not only memorable, but meaningful.

Emotion makes things matter.

And at the end of the day, isn’t that what we want: to matter?

That’s likely how we end up against roadblocks, swirling in thought spirals and pining for something – anything – to say, all while clinging to our ego and worrying about where we’re going to land. We don’t want to be invisible, but we don’t want to be insignificant when we do something about it. As Anne puts it:

“Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong. It is no wonder if we sometimes tend to take ourselves perhaps a bit too seriously.”

It’s true. We, as humans, are social creatures and have an innate need to be seen and heard by others. We are storytellers, it’s in our DNA. Yet writing is so deeply personal, so completely vulnerable. In many ways, it’s terrifying. A blank page can feel a lot like standing on the edge of a cliff.

But what we sometimes fail to recognize is that it’s our own cliff. Sure, we’re up there alone, but no one else can see what we see exactly the way we see it. Like Anne says:

“All you can give us is what life is about from your point of view.”

We don’t have to bend over backward to do something “different.” We don’t have to add that pressure. As long as it’s our own perspective, it’s all we need.

I say all this to encourage you, my reader, as well as myself. We, it turns out, are the keys to overcoming our own writer’s block. Now that we (I) have this acknowledgement in writing, let’s see if we (I) can hold ourselves (myself) to it.

1. I half expected Google Docs and Substack to not recognize the word “kryptonite,” but alas, they do. It’s pretty incredible, if you think about it it, how words like this – made-up terms part of fictional works – become a part of everyday vernacular; how something that was initially just a part of someone’s imagination (Jerry Siegel’s, in this case) became an actual, acknowledged thing. I would be willing to bet Jerry never thought that would be the case when he was creating Superman with his friend Joe Shuster. He was likely just focused on bringing the concept to life.