Happier Podcast Book Club
In this Happier Book Club episode, we discuss Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott.
Anne Lamott is the author of many New York Times bestsellers. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and inducted into the California Hall of Fame.
Here’s the description of Somehow: Thoughts on Love:
“Love is our only hope,” Anne Lamott writes in this perceptive new book. “It is not always the easiest choice, but it is always the right one, the noble path, the way home to safety, no matter how bleak the future looks.”
In Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Lamott explores the transformative power that love has in our lives: how it surprises us, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, reminds us of our humanity, and guides us forward. “Love just won’t be pinned down,” she says. “It is in our very atmosphere” and lies at the heart of who we are. We are, Lamott says, creatures of love.
In each chapter of Somehow, Lamott refracts all the colors of the spectrum. She explores the unexpected love for a partner later in life. The bruised (and bruising) love for a child who disappoints, even frightens. The sustaining love among a group of sinners, for a community in transition, in the wider world. The lessons she underscores are that love enlightens as it educates, comforts as it energizes, sustains as it surprises.
In the course of our wide-ranging conversation, we covered questions and topics such as:
- Why she decided to write about love
- How she writes both fiction and non-fiction
- How she thinks about humor–she’s so funny
- How her own writing process has evolved over the time since Bird by Bird
One listener asked how Annie and I know each other—through my college roommate, Megan, who appears in Annie’s first book, Hard Laughter. Here’s the photo of us as bridesmaids together.
She mentions the site A Writing Room, “a place for writers—and those who want to be.”
Anne Lamott’s Try This at Home: Keep going outside, no matter how busy you are.
Remember: Whenever it is and wherever you are, there’s always a book waiting for you.
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*This transcript is unedited*
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[music]
Gretchen
Hello and welcome to happier, a podcast where we talk about how to be happier. This week is a happier podcast book club episode. We’ll be talking to the brilliant and beloved author, Anne Lamott about her new number one New York Times bestseller, Somehow Thoughts on Love, and about her other work to.
Gretchen
I’m Gretchen Rubin, a writer who studies happiness, good habits, the five senses, human nature. I am in my little home office here in New York City, and joining me today from L.A. is my sister, Elizabeth Craft. And, Elizabeth, that always makes us happier to read a book.
Elizabeth
Yes it does. That’s me, Elizabeth Craft, a TV writer and producer living in L.A.. And Gretchen, I am a huge fan of Anne Lamott. So excited we’re talking to her today.
Gretchen
Before we jump in, just a quick reminder. Send in those. Ask us anything questions, plus hacks related to exercise, travel, or hiking. We want those hacks. Yes. And now for a book club episode about five years ago, we launched our happier podcast book club and today we will be talking about the book somehow Thoughts on Love, a collection of essays by Anne Lamont and Lamott, is an American author who writes both fiction and nonfiction, which is mostly autobiographical.
Gretchen
Her work manages to hit transcendent themes and also to be hilariously funny. I have to include one of my recent favorite things that I read from Anne Lamott. She writes, you can’t run alongside your grown children with sunscreen and chapstick on their hero’s journey. I think it’s hilarious. That comes from her essay 12 truths I Learned From Writing to Life.
Elizabeth
Hilarious. She’s the author of many New York Times bestsellers. Her nonfiction works include books such as dusk, night, Dawn, help! Thanks, wow, Grace, eventually, plan B, Traveling Mercies, and Operating Instructions, as well as Bird by Bird some Instructions on writing and life. She’s also written seven novels, including the trilogy composed of Imperfect Birds, Rosy and Crooked Little Heart, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and inducted into the California Hall of Fame.
Elizabeth
And that’s a tough stay. She still got inducted into a Hall of fame, I think famous people, I think.
Gretchen
So here’s the description of somehow thoughts on love, which is her 20th book, which, as we mentioned, was the number one New York Times bestseller. Love is our only Hope. Anne Lamott writes in this perceptive new book, it is not always the easiest choice, but it is always the right one. The noble path, the way home to safety, no matter how bleak the future looks in somehow.
Gretchen
Thoughts on love. Lamott explores the transformative power that love has in our lives. How it surprises us, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, reminds us of our humanity, and guides us forward. Love just won’t be pinned down, she says. It is in our very atmosphere and lies at the heart of who we are. We are, Lamott says. Creatures of love.
Gretchen
In each chapter of somehow, Lamott refracts all the colors of the spectrum. She explores the unexpected love for a partner later in life, the bruised and bruising love for a child who disappoints, even frightens, the sustaining love among a group of sinners for a community in transition in the wider world. The lessons, she underscores are that love enlightens as it educates, comforts as it energizes, sustains as it surprises.
Elizabeth
Yeah. So good.
Gretchen
Yeah. One of my secrets of adulthood for writing is a strong voice. Repels as well as attract, I think. And the Lord is a strong voice. She has such a distinctive style. I think that she’s one of these authors where if you handed me two sentences from any of her books, I would recognize that it’s her. She just.
Gretchen
She’s so distinctive. Yes. Welcome, Annie. Hello.
Anne Lamott
Hi, Annie. Thank you. Gretchen. Thank you. Liz.
Gretchen
We love the book. Of course, we are giant raving fans of your work. But to give listeners a sense of it, would you read a passage from it to give them a taste of what’s to come?
Anne Lamott
Oh, sure. Let’s see. I think I’ll read from the very end the coda that’s called glimmers. Yes, I have quoted my own version of a William Blake line for so long now that I like to think it’s mine. We are here to learn to endure the beams of love. I have lived by these words for nearly 50 years.
Anne Lamott
Ever since I first read the quote. It is the sentence I want my family to remember when I’m gone. Also, I hope they forget that someone else said it and that I get the credit. I. This is a radical idea. Absolutely contrary to everything I was raised to believe. I was taught to strive, to feel ashamed, to keep the family secrets, to believe I was better than yet always in danger of lagging behind.
Anne Lamott
I was taught to judge and surpass and above all, to showcase a shiny surface of confidence, individualism, and self-sufficiency. We were not a playful family. We were amused. I was taught to observe other people’s mediocrity in general ruin, and to make quiet and arch comments about it. What Blake is saying is that none of those things are who I am or why I am here, but without them.
Anne Lamott
Who on earth am I still a student? Aging set in her ways. One. And to bear the beams of love. What a nightmare. No, thanks. The cold, vibrating spaces inside us. Protect us and keep us on our toes. Love breaks your heart. And love makes you soft. It gets in past your Brooks Brothers armor and makes your skin as permeable as a little green frog.
Anne Lamott
My friend Caroline found in her shower. If you practice enduring people’s bewildering love for you, it will change you molecularly. It loosens you, glistens you, warms you. Bearing the beams of love can dislodge ancient sachets of joy, pain, shame and pride trapped inside you and make you smell strange and funny like soup. So maybe don’t. You are not stupid.
Anne Lamott
Love can leave bruises on the heart and oceanic ache. When you give someone your best love. You two are filled with warmth. The world can be so lame. Disappointing and even mean. Like an alcoholic father towering over us. But we can’t give up on love. Batting last or we are truly doomed. As Carl Sagan said, quote, for small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.
Anne Lamott
I consulted my six year old colleague to see if he could amplify his earlier statement that love is. Well, you know this stuff. Tell me more if you can, I said. What is love? He thought this over for a moment. It’s like, you know, duh.
Elizabeth
such a beautiful passage.
Anne Lamott
Thank you.
Gretchen
Yes. Beautiful. Well, coming up, we will ask Annie some of our questions, and then later we will address questions from listeners.
[Music]
Elizabeth
We are back talking to Annie Lamott about her fantastic new book. Why did you decide you wanted to write about love?
Anne Lamott
Well, I was kind of an accident. I really wanted to put together some essays and meditations for my son and grandson for when I’m gone. On everything that has ever worked during really, really tough, weird periods of time. Because the future they face is going to be rough. It just is with climate change and the possible loss of democracy.
Anne Lamott
Although I’m going to be fighting tooth and nail the second I hang up with you two today to make sure that doesn’t happen. But anyway, I started writing these pieces about community love, about the love of nature, about service, about food pantries, about romantic love, about the unbelievable gift of close friendship, which is basically why I have any faith at all in God.
Anne Lamott
And I wrote three of them, and they all had to do with love. That everything I know that has ever worked before, and almost certainly will again, ultimately has to do with love. And I thought, oh no, I don’t want to write a book on love. That’s even too California for me. Ha ha ha ha ha. And I’ve lived in California for all 70 years.
Anne Lamott
And, but then I thought, well, it seems to be what wants to be written, so I just push back my sleeves and pressed on.
Gretchen
So it started out as a just a personal project that you were going to do for your family, and then it turned into your professional project.
Anne Lamott
Well, yes and no. I as soon as I wrote a few pieces I really liked, and sort of, you know, cognitively I’m getting more and more amusing every day, but my writing mind seemed to be working fine. It was strange because I felt like I was able to with these pieces. I was able to tune the radio dial in really closely to what I was aiming for.
Anne Lamott
And you know what that’s like both of? Yes, that sometimes you can’t get close. And I kept feeling for some reason I was getting really close to what I was after. And I knew that it you know, this is what I do. I’m a writer, I’m unemployable. And I had a feeling early on it would turn into a book.
Gretchen
Well, okay. And on on the subject of you as a writer. So you started as a novelist. Your very first book was a novel. You’ve written several novels. You’ve also written many books of nonfiction. And you wrote a book about writing. That’s a very unusual range to have sort of a library like that. How do you think about what projects you want to do, and how do you feel about fiction versus nonfiction in your writing?
Anne Lamott
I’ve actually written seven novels and.
Gretchen
Seven, not.
Anne Lamott
Seven out of the 20 books I’ve written. Yeah. And, they’re hard, you know, they just they take several years and you have terrible self-esteem the entire first year. And you, you wish you’d stayed in college and could actually do something. They’re hard. It’s three years, at least four years. And in a couple of cases in your cafe to keep so many plates spinning in the air and characters are developing, which is not always convenient, can be and whatnot.
Anne Lamott
So yeah, I have to find a certain kind of stamina in my in my inside self before I can undertake a novel. You know, I’m older now, I’m kind of old and I’m not sure I have that. I’ll have that stamina again, but I really listen to the inside person. I listen to, to what is tugging on my sleeve to see whether it’s these little pieces.
Anne Lamott
You know, I think I’ve written like nine of these collections of essays that are on life and faith and being human and families and, you know, just, you know, the whole holy enchilada of B be here. Yeah. And then I’ve written this two books that were journals, one on On Operating Instructions, which was a journal which I didn’t actually set out to publish.
Anne Lamott
I just wanted to not forget these moments and stories of my son’s first year. And then my son and I wrote a book called Some Assembly Required, which was sort of a follow up, and it was a journal of my son’s first son, who’s now almost 15. And so but those just I just felt them intuitively that I should get all this stuff down on paper.
Anne Lamott
And then there’s a book on writing so that I don’t know. I loved the length of these little pieces, and I just, I sort of feel like I found my niche, you know. And I love the length. You’re like ten manuscript pages. It might be 3000 words and they’re kind of manageable, you know, and I mean they always end up being a thousand page pieces, words too long.
Anne Lamott
Then I go back and I take out of certain words. And, you know, I’ve been writing these pieces on being older for the Washington Post for almost for nine months now. I’ve sort of insulted that they asked me to write pages. But, I mean, you know, it’s only six. Yeah, I was 69 at the time, a young one.
Anne Lamott
but I, I always write and I’m sure this is true for both of you. You write a third again to law. More. Oh, more than a third, at least. Right. So for, 1100 words, which is the maximum I can write for the Washington Post, I write 18, 1900. Right. And then then I can get rid of 300 bits, and the other 1500 are so precious.
Anne Lamott
How could you even think of trying to get me to take out, you know, and so on? But I think I really found my niche. I found my sweet spot with these pieces. I just think of them as my little pieces, and they often have to do with faith or family or just the nightmare of, say, that started 2016 or, or, whatever.
Anne Lamott
And, and so I let myself do what I love to do so much.
Gretchen
One of the things that I think is so remarkable about your work is that you do manage to talk about transcendent themes, you grapple with dark issues, and yet you are so funny. I think people don’t have an alphabet just how funny you are. I find myself just laughing out loud, just in even, like you’ll have an adverb just dropped in and I’ll be like, oh, that adverb is so good.
Gretchen
How do you think about humor? Or is this just the natural way you express yourself? Do you, like, go through and sort of punch it up? Do you think about how to have a balance like you talk how you, I can’t remember about how when you were younger, you got funny because people were picking on you or leaving you out.
Gretchen
And so you found that this was a way to make friends and protect yourself. Yeah. How do you think about humor in your writing?
Anne Lamott
I actually got funny because boys bullied me, because I had this very crazy hair. And, I discovered that humor that if I could think of a retort when a gang of boys on bikes or in the blacktop. Believe me, if I could think as a way of a great line, it would. It would really put that one boy down and kind of make him look like a bit of a fool in the eyes of his, his gang members, you know, six year old or whatever.
Anne Lamott
I mean, it started very early and it was just awful. And, and over and over again, I just I also just had this gift. You know, it’s funny, I was thinking about when I got funny, and I remember when I was about six years old to. That’s first grade. I was funny, my first grade, I had my grades by kindergarten.
Anne Lamott
And I just had a lot of stuff on me. And I just that what saved me my salvation, the way other people might talk about Jesus or Buddha was chapter books. Right. And I think you would probably both say the same thing, that I was a really early reader, and by four or so I discovered that you could read a story, you could be immersed in these people sometimes who were funny, like Beverly Cleary or, you know, or, or Beatrix Potter, and then eventually E.B. white and, Stuart little interest.
Anne Lamott
And then you could wake up the next morning and they were still there. And the story continued. And I literally was saved by that. But I was also saved by trying out, trying out these funny little set pieces, like when I was coming up. I’m a little older than you two. Mr. clean was, there was a commercial from his journey.
Anne Lamott
Yeah, we had a black and white TV, and I could do the impersonation of the Mr. Clean commercial. And I remember my mom and dad and their friends were over course, they were drinking, so it probably seemed funnier than it was, but I did Mr. Clean, and they just lost their minds. Right. And so that became something that was a part of my value system, that when I could make people laugh, but I was never left out.
Anne Lamott
I mean, I oh, my superpower was always friendship, always what I was best at and what I, lived for. Yeah. Yeah. So, in my work, back to the original question, it’s funny because what I, I don’t usually put stuff in to make it funnier. I usually go through it and take stuff out because I’m trying too hard.
Gretchen
Oh, yeah, I do that with quotations.
Anne Lamott
Yeah.
Gretchen
I put in so many quotations that I love, and I have to do a pass where I take them out. Yes.
Elizabeth
Interesting. Yeah. Well, and you often obviously write about your own life and so other people’s stories come into it. Yeah. And somehow you write about getting married for the first time, about challenges with your son and your neighbors. Now, one of the most often quoted passages from your work comes from Bird by Bird, some instructions on writing in life where you write, you own everything that happens.
Elizabeth
You tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better. this just makes us laugh. Yeah. How does that work in practice?
Anne Lamott
Yeah, well, my son has a writing collective called, Writing room.com online. It’s five. It’s. I think it’s almost 600 writers. Oh, wow. Yeah. Helping each other and supporting each other. And we do a lot of prompts there and some of some of them are mine. I’ll give you some later, if you remember. All right. Well, yeah, a lot of the questions there are.
Anne Lamott
How do I write about my family without being exiled? I was abused or I what it was, it was evil. Or how do I write about my ex-husband without slander and libel? And the answer? The easy answer is fiction. and in my experience, if you change people’s hair color and height, they never, ever recognize themselves. oh.
Anne Lamott
And a number of times you can also, if there was stuff going on in your I mean, Flannery O’Connor famously said that if you survive childhood, you have enough material to write for the rest of your life. And that’s what we talk about at a writing room.com. You’ve got the material. Get, get some legal paper because it’s longer and scribble down every single memory, beginning with the very first.
Anne Lamott
Holidays are great prompts, you know, because you might remember being 3 or 4 and have a kind of film, flickering memory of the Christmas tree or the Hanukkah candle, the menorah or whatever, and just get it all down, because every single thing in you is trying to get you to not right. And one of this, one of the I mean, no one in your family is going to be happy to hear you’re writing a memoir, right.
Anne Lamott
And so but everything’s gonna try to get you not to put it down on paper. So this idea of being exiled from your family or sued is one of the tools that it will use to get to silence you. And so I say, get a legal pad and scribble down page after page of memory and snippets visions you had.
Anne Lamott
I still remember a couple of dreams I had before I went to kindergarten. You know, I don’t always remember it. I never have my fly zipped up. I’ve been on stage with shoes that don’t match, but I can remember some dreams from an early house that we moved out of when I was four and a half. And so get it all down and we are going to worry about this later.
Anne Lamott
And right, so so good. Right? For so right for two years. And you get to you know, you get to also check. Well writing we were actually any writing community you can find. You might find one at a community college. You do need a community. You can’t do it alone. You need feedback and you need support.
Anne Lamott
And you need someone to say, I understand how anxious you are because your mother, this really is your mother. But what if you make it the mother of your best friend? What if you what if the narrator is narrating the story of her best friends, family, and, you change the hair color, you change the height. But the main thing is, you just do the writing first, and we’ll figure it out together later.
Anne Lamott
Just don’t think about it. It’s not. It’s just trying to keep you from writing.
Elizabeth
Great advice.
Gretchen
well coming up we will pose questions from listeners. But first this break.
[music]
Elizabeth
Okay, we are back and we have some questions from listeners. And this comes from Emma, she said. Tell us how Anne Lamott and Gretchen know one another.
Gretchen
What? Annie, can I jump in and answer this?
Anne Lamott
Yes.
Gretchen
Okay. So when I was in college, my roommate was Megan. And one of the things about Megan is she mentioned to me that she appeared as a character in a, in a novel by Anne Lamott, and I will post in the show notes a picture of the cover of the book Hard Laughter. And indeed, Megan is in that novel under her own name.
Gretchen
Megan, and she is exactly the way she is in real life. I recognize her as a child character, but this got me so. So I really focused on and Lamott as a writer more because I had this connection to her. Well, flash forward, we were bridesmaids together and got married and we were there. And at that point, like I did not know that I wanted to be a writer, but I so revered writers, and I so loved the work of Anne and Lamott that I was too scared to talk to her.
Gretchen
You had Baby Sam with you, and I just I was just too intimidated to say anything. I just kind of lurked around and stared at you from across the room, then cut to several years later, and then our paths crossed, as both writers. And so for me, you kind of represent this iconic figure that stood on the other side of the river for me, but that I just I managed to cross over myself.
Gretchen
And so and I’ll post a post a picture of us as bridesmaids together. It’s just very funny that we go all the way back in this quirky way. And I’m a fan of your work now. It’s just, so that’s how that’s how we sort of. I knew Annie before she knew me.
Anne Lamott
And then I got to come to your house about 6 or 7 years ago and do a podcast. When, in your early days of your podcast, yes. And although it was huge even then, and, you know, I took a bunch of stuff when you went to the bathroom, I took I took an ashtray. Oh yeah.
Gretchen
I think we did an Instagram Live. I think you’re now husband Neil was there.
Anne Lamott
Yeah, yeah.
Gretchen
I met your son. We did a podcast recording with your son with his great podcast. Yeah. So now we’ve got all kinds of overlapping connections.
Anne Lamott
Yeah.
Elizabeth
So fun.
Gretchen
Yeah. It’s so fun.
Anne Lamott
Yeah, I love it. Did we do a symphony space together too? Yeah.
Gretchen
Oh my gosh. So yes, we did a symphony space. And when the publicist said oh would you do like an in conversation with Lamont, I was like, this is something that I don’t need to prepare for. I’m already prepared. Like I walk into this, I already know I have my favorite passages. Bach. I own all her books. You don’t need to send me an ear for books.
Gretchen
So that was great. And Annie, I was just at the the thing at Symphony Space that celebrates the publication of somehow your 20th book and your 70th birthday. So that was super fun.
Anne Lamott
Oh my God. Yeah, yeah.
Gretchen
You packed a.
Anne Lamott
House. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, that was wild. Yeah, but you and I packed the house too. I have to say.
Gretchen
We did, we did, we had we had a really fun event that time.
Elizabeth
Too. Oh, it’s a great story.
Anne Lamott
Couple old friends. I know. It was just like the zero anxiety. You know, there’s that one minute when you step out or there’s five minutes beforehand and then you step out and you look at the face of an old friend and you just start riffing, you know?
Gretchen
Oh, well, you know what, Annie? I actually remember there was a point where you were like, well, right before we started, you were like, well, what about this question about time? And I was like, that’s my problem. You just be brilliant and charming. I will watch the clock. And you were like, okay, yeah.
Anne Lamott
That works.
Gretchen
Yeah.
Elizabeth
That works. Here’s a question I love from Ronan. He says, what was the most challenging type of love for you to explore and write about in the book?
Anne Lamott
that’s a wonderful question. I could probably write about that. I think self-love, you know, I write in the book, and somehow I write about finding Neil at the ripe old age of. And we got married three days after I started getting Social Security. He’s a year and a half younger, and which comes up, you wouldn’t believe how often in conversation.
Anne Lamott
you know, I write a lot about family love, which can be so fraught and tangled and so blessed and so challenging. So, you know, some days with families are just too long and, and the love of community, which for a person like me who’s very introverted and shy and doesn’t like to leave the house, is, is, really where I found salvation, another kind of salvation in which I absolutely resist it with every fiber of my being.
Anne Lamott
But to self love is like the last frontier. And, it’s so hard because, you know, Gabriel Garcia marquez said, there’s your public life, there’s your private life, and there’s your secret life, and it, you know, and in your secret life, you see just how kind of ruined you are, how ambitious you see the striving, you see the extreme narcissism and the absolute self-obsession and the not really caring about all this stuff that you pretend to care about and all of it.
Anne Lamott
And to do that deep dive into it and to just start to be really friendly and to say, first of all, I mean, the point of most of the pieces I write is that we’re all pretty much the same. I’m not uniquely screwed up. Anything I’ve written about, I’m almost positive it’s universal. But to learn to love and forgive myself has been the hardest work I’ve ever had to do.
Anne Lamott
And I think I really do think it’s the final frontier that, you know, one of my my son now has 14 years clean and sober. But when he was out there, I didn’t know if he would live. I didn’t know if he’d survive his, his drug addiction. And, I also didn’t know what he might do. You know, stoned and drunk.
Anne Lamott
And I came to the understanding that no matter what he did, even if he killed someone, I would still have absolutely unconditional love for him. That that is the sacred nature of love, that it’s not transactional. Right. And so I had to use that as the template for finding a deep friendliness and acceptance of my own mixed up self.
Anne Lamott
Just gorgeous, incredibly generous and spiritual and sweet and funny and deeply human and mixed up and scared, you know, and grasping and clench, you know, and full of judgment. That’s my the main cross to bear ish is that endless judgment. And so that’s the work I’ve done kind of on, on the page.
Gretchen
Trish asks, do your son and grandson read your manuscripts before they’re published?
Anne Lamott
my son reads a lot of the pieces I write. I’m not positive he’s read. Of course he’s read the books about him. yeah. I dedicated somehow to to Jax, and he was very, very pleased. I kind of stunned to see that because it just says on the first page, you know, for Jax. But no, I mean, Jax has read the piece, the parts of operating instructions in, I mean, anything, it has Sam in it.
Anne Lamott
I’ve shown to him since he was ten. You know, I always cleared everything with Sam since. But, you know, I think to most you read the pieces that are about them. Yeah.
Elizabeth
Like all of us. Yeah. That’s interesting.
Anne Lamott
Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.
Elizabeth
And finally and Ari asks how has your own writing process evolved over the decades since Bird by Bird.
Anne Lamott
Well that’s a really good question. And you know I talk about that endlessly at a writing room.com because I don’t know much else besides what I wrote. Amber by bird. And I did a five week Bird by Bird workshop where I for the first time of my life and in fact, Sam in his company, recorded me reading Bird by Bird.
Anne Lamott
It had never been in my voice before. And about five years ago. Yeah. So I did at his studio because it had been read by an actress 30 years ago when it came out. And, you know, I she hadn’t read it until I read it for Sam Studio, but for a writing room.com, I did a five week workshop where I took like 60 pages at a time.
Anne Lamott
It’s been an hour and a half on them with the the collective and a lot of it. I don’t want to sound self-aggrandizing, but I thought, that’s really good. That’s really great. You know? And then, you know, both of you what it’s like some of it, you go, your heart sinks and you go, oh, where was my editor?
Anne Lamott
You know, and I could do that better now. But I have to say, I don’t have much to add to what I already, because it was originally called every single thing I know about writing. Well, there is one thing I did a, a workshop, about a month ago at a writing room on, on writer’s block and in Bird by Bird.
Anne Lamott
I did a few pages on how it’s going to happen to every single writer, that you’re going to run out of any good ideas, you’re going to realize what a complete fraud you are and what a loser. And and this and that and, that I didn’t really have techniques and tools and I do, and I can’t recreate it right now, but I had like eight tools.
Anne Lamott
let me think of one of them if I can. You jump ahead, you go 20 pages ahead of where you’ve gotten stuck or, I wish I had it in front of me because they were really good. One was, I know you introduce a character just out of the blue, you know, and, you start to ask yourself the same kind of deep questions of your characters that, you know, I mean, the same questions you’d ask of somebody.
Anne Lamott
You’re getting to know of a possible friend. What are you most afraid of? What do you what do you what do you really, When all is said and done, what do you want? And then that will kind of unloose. And it’s like a really tight, tangled skein of wool, and it’s kind of. Or pick up sticks, you know, it’s kind of somehow loosening the logjam.
Anne Lamott
And so I actually think I could if I did revise for By Bird, I would do a long piece on writer’s block because it’s just that’s why you need community. That’s why you need to either go to a bookstore or a community college or or next door and start one that you need people to kind of midwife you because it’s as you both know as well as anyone, it can be so hard, such tough going.
Anne Lamott
Yeah. Yes.
Gretchen
Well, finally we ask all our guests if you have a try this at home suggestion. Something that listeners can do is just part of their ordinary days to be happier, healthier, more productive, more creative. Do you have any suggestions?
Anne Lamott
Well, my go to suggestion is, to just keep going outside no matter what, no matter how busy and important you think you are, and to look up and to look around. I, my pastor said 30 years ago that you could trap bees in a mason jar, without a lid on it, with a drop of honey on the bottom because they don’t look up, you know, they just sort of walk around bitterly bumping into the walls of the jar.
Anne Lamott
And, it’s the same for us. And, to get out of ourselves, to get out of our clench and clutch and grasp and cling and judge, all we have to do is step outside and look up. You know, you don’t look outside. You go, you know, I like stars. They’re pretty. You look outside and you look up at the night sky and you go, wow, now.
Anne Lamott
Or you go, Holy cow! Or you step outside and you know, everything’s in bloom all of a sudden, or you take the beginning of the book of somehow is something my husband said years and years ago, which is that you can see everything that is beautiful and true about life on any ten minute walk in the city, in the country, or in, you know, outside your own door, you can see what is true and beautiful and what still works.
Anne Lamott
So that would be my go to change that you can make is that as a habit you get it. You take these breaks and you don’t go to MSNBC or to Twitter. So you go outside and you look up and you look around, you know, five minutes here, three minutes there, ten minutes here.
Gretchen
Well, that is beautiful. Thank you so much. We’ve so enjoyed this.
Anne Lamott
Lizabeth. Thank you Gretchen. So I loved it today.
Gretchen
We’d love to hear your impressions and reflections on the work of Anne Lamott. Let us know on Instagram threads. Tick tock. Facebook. Drop us an email at. Podcaster Gretchen rubin.com. Or as always, you can go to the show notes. This is happier cast.com/487. For everything related to this episode, I will post photos of Anne Lamott and me as bridesmaids.
Gretchen
Remember, whenever it is and wherever you are, there’s always a book waiting for you and Gretch.
Elizabeth
What’s the resource this week?
Gretchen
Okay, so excited to offer a massive merch sale for fans of the podcast. It is the biggest discount of the year. You can get up to 45% off on popular Drinkware organization tools apparel related to the podcast. Elizabeth, you like the Onward and Upward t shirt? Yeah, I like my happier mug and my happier AirPod case. Go check it out at happier Cars.com slash merch, and the discounts will automatically be applied to everything on the page.
Gretchen
Give yourself a treat. This sale ends on June 25th, 2024.
Elizabeth
Right?
Gretchen
And that’s it for this episode of happier. Remember to try this at home. Read somehow or some other book by Anne Lamott. Let us know what you thought.
Elizabeth
Thank you to our wonderful guest, Anne Lamott. Thank you to our executive producer, Chuck Reid, and everyone at Odyssey. Get in touch. Gretchen’s on Instagram threads, Facebook and TikTok at Gretchen Rubin, and I’m on Instagram and threads Atlas Craft. Our email address is podcast the Gretchen rubin.com.
Gretchen
And you know what I’m going to say? Please rate us. Please review us. Please recommend us to your friends. Here’s your rhyming motto. If you’re a fan of the show, make sure your friends know.
Elizabeth
Until next week, I’m Elizabeth.
Gretchen
Craft and I’m Gretchen Rubin. Thanks for joining us. Onward and upward.
Elizabeth
Right. You know, I love my mugs. I have a mug that says Bird by Bird that somebody had made because Ann’s book, Bird by Bird, is such a huge inspiration. So, yeah, I got my bird by bird mug.
Gretchen
You can drink from it as you’re writing your thriller. It’ll keep you going. Yes.
Gretchen
From the onward project.