Today I stumbled on an excerpt from Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird, one of her early books about writing. From an early chapter entitled “Shitty First Drafts:”
“[S]hitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. People tend to look at successful writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her.”
It occurs to me what much of what Lamott discusses relating to writing also applies generally to life – particularly at the new year. That is, I make a resolution and expect that I will keep it for, at a minimum, 365 days, perhaps a lifetime. It will, I think, be easy because I am resolved to stick with it. “But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated.” Or, perhaps better stated, then comes January 2, then January 3, January 4, January 5, January 6, January 7, January 8, January 9, January 10, January 11, January 12, January 13, January 14, 14…. You get the point.
Mostly, success, success in writing, professional success, personal success, success in anything, comes in fits and starts, it comes through victory and defeat, through joy and sadness, through determination and resignation, then more determination and resignation. It comes through (watch out, he’s mixing metaphors) taking the closed-eyed swing of the “shitty first draft” mess we call yesterday, trusting in grace and forgiveness, picking up the bat (or the pen, or the whatever) dusting off my ego, and taking another swing for the fence today (or hell, maybe just trying to just advance a runner with a sacrifice bunt). To paraphrase Samuel Beckett (I don’t know if he liked baseball) success comes from trying again, failing again, but failing better.
It occurs to me... 