“Perfectionism is the enemy of the people,” Anne Lamott tells a roomful of aspiring writers. What the novelist and essayist is saying, of course, is that the first draft will be bad and characters will take time to emerge fully fleshed. The idea that great writing flows like champagne at a wedding party is pernicious. The audience appeared comforted to know that even respected writers must work hard.
Much of the 1999 documentary on Lamott, Bird by Bird (out now on DVD), consists of the self-deprecating author in one public setting or another. Oscar-winning director Frieda Lee Mock insured that Lamott would not be confused with the retiring sort of writer who can barely be coaxed into a bookshop for a signing session. Lamott is a leftist political activist who found fulfillment in an integrated Presbyterian church with a hot gospel choir. To go deeper into her biography, she was a shy girl who always wanted to write; starting in her teens, alcohol and other drugs freed her to pursue a public life, until they chained her in dependency. Against the grain of her religiously uncommitted upbringing, she found her way to church.
Writing and life are inseparable. As Lamott explains in Bird by Bird, writing a novel is like juggling six plates at a time. It should also be a search for meaning, a voyage of discovery communicating something valuable about the human experience.
