This year, I intend to explore more writing topics on the blog, whether that’s reposting articles, sharing my own questions and observations, analyzing good books, or recommending books I like.

One regular feature will combine a couple of those interests. Periodically through the year, I’ll be re-reading some of my favorite books on the craft of writing, posting my thoughts, and occasionally adding my own two bits. This will be a chapter-by-chapter deep dive into books I consider essential for any writer.

It’s a book club, but I pick all the books and I’m the only one who gets to talk. Which, honestly, is my ideal book club.

There will be some personal asides or journaling involved, if the book triggers something. I might ask you to join along, if you’d like. Each book will take a few weeks to read, digest, and blog, so there won’t be more than 2 or 3 this year, unless I read and write really quickly.

My first book is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, A – because I’ve read it at least a half dozen times and B – it’s well-organized and eminently quotable. Chances are pretty good that you are familiar with it.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott brings her snarky, down-to-earth, barebones honesty and kindness to the craft of writing and the creative life. Though sprinkled with some concrete craft advice, the book is as much memoir as instruction manual, focusing on the process of becoming a writer and forging a fulfilling creative life. From starting small to turning down the volume on your inner critic, from memory exercises to shitty first drafts, Lamott provides a funny and warm on-ramp for writers at all stages of their practice.

Introduction

Funnily enough, one of the longest sections in the book is the introduction, in which Lamott relates some stories of her childhood, including her father’s writing career and how she caught the writing bug. She writes about her journey to publication, starting with a terrible short story she submitted multiple times to her father’s agent and continuing through her first several books. If the phrase “my father’s agent” doesn’t make you fling the book across the room, you’ve made it through the roughest part.

This is as good an excuse as any to introduce myself.

My father did not have an agent. Neither of my parents were particularly creative, though my dad excelled at puttering. I don’t recall either of them reading much, despite the numerous packed bookshelves in our home. Unfortunately, most of those were books about our religion. It’s both ironic and telling that my mom bought literally hundreds of books on faith-based topics, but never cracked one. For reasons I can’t explain, we had a boxed set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and a leatherbound edition of The Hobbit, which I appropriated after my dad passed. Someone must have convinced mom they were classics, without mentioning the orcs.

I was also the only kid at school with two sets of encyclopedias as home. Probably the only kid with even one set. I’m not sure how much the nation’s backstory changed between 1964 and 1976, but mom wanted us to be prepared. Apparently, she was a sucker for door-to-door salesmen, which is also how we obtained our religion.

Mom talked about reading way more than she did it, but this did create my own love of books. I have a clear memory of reading my first – Go, Dog, Go! – and though “dog” and “go” together account for about 80 percent of the words, it still counts. I was probably about 5 and I remember being both surprised and pleased when I reached the last page. I hadn’t been certain I could do it. Something magical occurred, like I’d unlocked a secret. I felt adult. Not long after, I experienced the downside of learning to read independently. One weekend afternoon, when I asked my dad to sit and read to me, he replied, “I thought you could read.” I lied, as children do, and said I could not, but after an extremely rushed and uncomfortable recitation of The Dragon Who Could Spit Fire, I never asked again. One does hate to be a nuisance.

It did not take long before I knew I also wanted to write. I don’t recall the exact moment it happened, but one day it clicked that someone had drawn the cartoons in those Dr. Suess books and the Flash Gordon comics strip and the Batman comics I loved, and had written words to go along with them. I could do that. By the second grade, I had a ready answer to the question of what I wanted to be when I grow up. Compared to the firefighters, race car drivers, and nurses in the room, I felt both unique and mature. I loved the look of surprise and delight that would cross a teacher’s face when I said it. My vocation was a conscious choice, not something I’d seen on television. No one else ever said writer. I don’t remember any other kid mentioning any creative job at all.

And I started writing. I wrote an encyclopedia of all the superheroes I could name, Batman comics, numerous Flash Gordon pastiches. I cut out Peanuts cartoons and rearranged them into new stories with different dialogue. In the fourth grade, I was put into a weekly creative writing club. I don’t remember what class we were pulled out of – probably English – but leaving regular lessons to go to a special club was some hot shit. I won the award for best story and the club illustrated it and they made a slide show presentation. To date, this is the only time I’ve won a writing award. In junior high, I graduated to writing fantasy and horror stories, mostly horror, and mostly on the dramatic elements of boobs and erections.

By the time I went to college, I was serious about my writing, even if no one else was. All through my teens, I’d dreamed of the ivy-covered dorm experience, with tweedy professors invested in my education and peers who didn’t try to shove me into lockers or down the stairs. Unfortunately, my private school dreams didn’t survive the encounter with my community college budget, and it turns out I was lucky to have that (spoiler alert: I didn’t get my first year’s money from my parents). But, while I didn’t get my poetry readings in smoke-filled bars or hallway folk concerts or all night gab fests about artsy topics or even frisbee in the quad, I did find bits of nourishment for my soul.

I had several wonderful professors, all of whom recognized and encouraged my talent. I got involved in student activities – newspaper and literary magazine, naturally – and like Anne Lamott, became the acknowledged storyteller of our group, often pressed into service to relate stories I’d experienced only secondhand, when actual witnesses proved unworthy. College was also the first place anyone bragged about me and specifically about my writing. Will’s smart. He’s talented. He’s going places. If you want help with your term paper, you need to ask Will. Get Will to write that. I’d never heard such things. I never even considered the possibility. My identity as a writer was set.

Probably the dumbest thing I’ve done in life was losing touch with many of those friends and my professors after I graduated. Blame a combination of restlessness and coming out and a need to change my scenery. But in California, I found other nourishment. There, I did get my poetry readings and late night gabfests with people who loved good writing, unconventional music, and offbeat movies and theater. I wrote some short stories and poetry, had a few near misses at publication and some encouraging rejections. I started a zine with a few friends, wrote for some small newspapers, and got involved in theater work, but only on the management side, never creative. Kinda lost my way after that – another relocation put me out of reach of my encouragers – but I never stopped writing.

It was the one thing I could always come back to, the part of me that won’t give up. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood writes about holding onto that last inch, the part of you that you won’t surrender, no matter how tired you are or how badly you’re beaten down. I’ve always been lucky that I could hold on to that last inch. No matter what life threw at me, no matter how far away I drifted from the person I knew I could be, I had that last inch that I refused to shed, and writing is what always led me back. I am myself when I’m writing and when I’m lost, I can always find me there.

Your turn

When did you start to write or engage in your other creative work? What was your a-ha moment? Who encouraged you?