Imperfect Birds
Interview with Anne Lamott
To Be Published April 6, 2010
Time slid fast this morning, greased by Anne Lamott’s inspiring answers. We were scheduled for a half hour, and we talked long past sixty-minutes. Annie graciously said to take all the time I wanted to interview her for the Writer’s Digest article.
We opened, talking about Imperfect Birds, the third of a trilogy that she began writing, she said, when she was still drinking heavily. Her concerns — after she cleaned up — shifted to the children of her Northern California village, who existed, easily seduced by drugs. The kids seemed fabulous, all the while their inner lives were falling apart. This story is Rosie’s, now that she is seventeen.
Annie says it’s a small miracle to her to have the galley in hand. The galley — which I also read — looks like a paperback novel, but with errors sprinkled throughout. This will not be the final generation. Annie says she keeps finding words and paragraphs and pages she wants to change, and meanwhile, god bless her copy editor. Annie began with a blank page in June of oh-seven. It is, she says, writing is, a walk of faith. Two feet forward, one back. But it’s done. This book, the final piece of the trilogy, is done. Mostly.
Elizabeth, Rosie’s mother in the book, is sober now. Annie dispels the belief that the writing craft is fed by drinking — she says healing is like getting your inner windows washed. Mess and loss are transformed into grace.
I could listen to Annie for hours. I can’t imagine how her first drafts could possibly be “shitty” — she says they “just suck” — when wise gems sparkle off her tongue without any self-editing.
Annie says some of us are called to be our culture’s storytellers.
My story is due in nineteen days. My fingers are crossed that my first draft isn’t shitty.
