This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. . . . You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file. . . . You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. Writing, she makes clear, is not for the fainthearted, the easily bored, the fame-seeking. It is not for individuals who cannot face up to their own madness.
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.