Anne Lamott says that what often gets in the way of our writing is all the critical voices we hear everytime our fingers touch the keyboards. What I’ve come to learn as a writer-person is that I first have to quiet my brain enough to even hear the voices. I’m not sure if the cacophony in my brain is because I’m a writer or I’m a writer because of the cacophony. That I even know cacophony should mean something, right?
But even processing that thought is its own noise. Allowing myself–no, more like demanding myself to stay still is its own torture. I’m not all that special in the lunacy. I live in a society that immerses itself in noise–television, radio, iPods, media bombardment. They’re all ways to avoid keeping company with the one person who is our own Hannibal Lector–ourselves. But stillness is mandatory if writing, at least any prolonged writing will result.
Some days I go to the keyboard and there’s a convention of strangers with varying degrees of neurotic tendencies all meeting in my brain. So I either write poop or I listen to poop. Either way, it’s tough. Being my own worst enemy means I can’t get rid of me. But those others? Those I can drop in the mason jar. After all, Anne Lamott says that’s where they belong. Drop them in like mice.
