Anne Lamont On Writing

Apply this to anything creative you want to do.

“I used to not be able to work if there were dishes in the sink.
Then I had a child and now I can work if there is a corpse in the sink.
Because you’re always on borrowed time. None of your favorite writers,
let alone your own personal self, sits down in the morning and just
feels great about the work ahead of them. No one sits down and feels
like a million dollars. People sit down and go into either fugue states
or into this highly aerobicized sort of up-down thing.

During the O.J. [Simpson] trial all hell broke loose ‘cause I work
downstairs in this office; some people might call it a garage. And the
TV is upstairs and so I’d sit down, get up, sit down, get up, sit down,
get up, say my little prayer. I’d pray, Please, God, help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written.
And then I’d sit down and I would do a little bribe and I would say,
‘If you stay here for half an hour and you write that one tiny little
moment where the uncle sees the shores of Inverness, California for the
first time in his life then we will get up and watch a little O.J.’”