Writers are outsiders, observers, recorders of weird coppery breath. Publishing, many writing students are dismayed to discover, is not what writing is all about. And when it happens it is certainly not a panacea. Publication will not make you more confident or more beautiful, and it will probably not make you any richer. Setting euphemism firmly aside in breaking down the writing process, Ms. Lamott calls a bird a bird and a bad first draft what it deserves to be called.
Every writer projects an invention larger than the self on the page.
The hidden, struggling human throws his voice each day from behind the curtain to create the illusion of the literary Self. Ms. Lamott takes us behind that curtain, zeroes in on the crumbs on the floor, the ripped upholstery, the combination of temerity and humility that inspires the writerly psyche to keep confronting its monolithic ventriloquial task. The poet Theodore Roethke once said that writing cannot be taught, it can only be insinuated. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.