i want to welcome you to the event on behalf of the college. we have another event coming up wednesday night that i want to tell you about, if woodrow wilson visiting fellow by the

name of richard benedetto who is one of the original founders of "usa today" is going to talk about a the several decades of experience in the white house press corps. [laughter] not exact via spiritual place. [laughter] but an important one nonetheless so this is the final brooklyn voices event of this fall season so we will keep you posted about what is coming up next season. right now i want to bring up the co-owner and the person who directs the series on behalf of greenlight bookstore jessica stockton. [applause] >> thanks, ted. i'm the events and marketing

director at greenlight bookstore and we are honored to be hosting anne lamott present her book "almost everything." she will be speaking. we are so grateful with this partnership that allows us to bring you these offense at this beautiful space not long -- not far from our bookstore. if you miss any of those events you can listen to past brooklyn voices events on our podcasting greenlight bookstore.com/podcasts. this is the final event of the season but we hope to have ring events up soon. i also want to thank the folks from c-span who are filming this event and working with us to share this discussion with a wider rds. just a few housekeeping things. please silence of the cell phones or other electronic devices. if you purchase a ticket to this event you should have received

your copy of "almost everything" as you walk into additional copies of the new book as well as other titles by anne lamott are for sale and anne will be signing books. she won't have time to personalize it. assigning table will be over here in the signing line will form around a permit or the avatar in. if you preferred not to wait in line we may have a limited number of already sign copies so check with us. we will be passing out cards and we will walk through the audience with those. we will collect those part way through the discussion and the moderator will choose the questions. our interviewer for this evening is edward l. back a roman catholic priest. he's also an author playwright and commentator for "cnn" on issues of things religion and ethics who has worked in the mainstream media for over 20 years. he is currently on sabbatical so

we are honored he is joining us this evening. he'll be speaking with their featured author anne lamott the author of "the news york times" bestseller hollowly unable to -- hallelujah anyway. grace eventually plan b and operating operating instructions racing author of seven novels including imperfect birds and rosie. a guggenheim fellowship inductee to the california hall of fame she lives in northern california. her new book sub on is perhaps the book we need most from her right now. uncertainty surrounds us in the news in our families and ourselves. even when life is at its weakest when we are as she puts it doomed exhausted and over caffeinated. in each profound and funny chapter of "almost everything"

lamott calls for us to read discover the negative hope and wisdom that are inside of us. you were in for something very special tonight. please join me in welcoming to the stage anne lamott. [applause] [applause] >> thank you. can i talk to the lighting guy from here. just got so bright. i'm actually blinded. [laughter] how are you over there? >> i'm used to this. [laughter] edward and i have been friends

over time. we are very excited about each other's work in the world. we work together in l.a. a week ago and got to spend some time reconnecting. i just love, love being with him on stage. it's not just an honor. it's having a friend up here in the brother with me. i'm going to read a few pages from the book so you can get a sense of what it's like and then we will sit down. we hope you have questions you can ask me pretty much anything. you might want to be a bit more sensitive with him. [laughter] these are the first few pages of the prelude. i'm stuck piling antibiotics for the apocalypse even as i await the blossoming of the windowsill in the kitchen.

the news of the dream of modern life everything exploding earning being shot or crashing to the ground all around us while growing older has provided me with a measure of perspective and equilibrium and a long-term romance. people all disappear while we rejoice and drive in the spring and the sweetness of old friendships. families are tricky. there's a whole chapter that begins families are hard, hard, hard. [laughter] there is so much going on that flattens us that his huge scary or appalling. we are doomed to exhausted and over caffeinated and yet outside my window yellow roses bloom and little kids horse around making a joyous racket. in general it doesn't feel like the light is making a lot of regrets. feels like death by an annoyance

at the same time the truth is we are beloved even in our current condition by someone. we have loved and been loved. we have also known love lost to death or rejection and that somehow leads to new life. we have been redeemed and saved by love and the few times they've been nearly destroyed in were seen our children nearly destroyed. we are who we love. we are one and we are autonomous there's another chapter that begins all truth is paradox. why have some of us felt like jumping off tall buildings ever since i can remember even those of us who did not struggle with clinical depression. way up we repeatedly imagine turning the wheels of our cars into oncoming trucks? to me this is very natural. i think it is hard here. there is the app salute hopelessness that everyone we love will die even our newborn

granddaughter. even if we trust to know that local give rise to growth miracles and resurrection. love in the world's beauty and humanity are the reasons we have hope yet no matter how much we recycle believe in our pre-assist and abide by local laws we see that her beauty is being destroyed crushed by greed and cruel stupidity. we also see love and tender hearts carry the day. fear against all odds leads to community to bravery in action and it gives us hope. i wake up not knowing if my leader has bombed north korea and still this past year has been just about the happiest of my life. so yeah it can all be a little confusing than one hand there's the hopelessness of people living in grinding poverty in sub-saharan africa uptown oakland. we pour our money and time into organizations that feed and

mentor people teach in uganda in appalachia show up in refugee camps with water. people like us all over the world teach children teach girls auto repair and electrical installation, teach boys to care for babies. i have never written a more global and national brutality in such goodness in the world's response to our own. some of us grew up in the alternative universe of unhappy marriages where we accepted as normal desperate parental need. i am sure your family was just fine. [laughter] and the love you grew up with was kindness and mutual respect. delight in each other patients with a spouse or a child's foibles but other families just a few here and there hardly

worth mentioning were stressful neglectful fundamentalist racist alcoholic schizophrenic and/or repressed. brothers and sisters didn't always survive. they became jumpy perfectionists. t.s. eliot wrote tedious to care not to care. teach us to sit still. we long for this and yet we check our smartphones every 10 minutes for news, texts and distractions. just before my 61st birthday i decided to make a list for my grandson and knees who are exuberant in worried as i was at their age and still am some days as i am right now. my dearest i began to have a spiritual mentor named bonnie for three decades now who loves me and trust god and goodness so crazily that i sometimes think of her as horrible bonnie because i cannot get her to

judge me or abandon hope. for 30 years she has answered all of my distressed or deeply annoying phonecalls by saying hello dearest, i am so glad it's you. i have come to believe that this is how god feels when i pray even at highlight -- least attractive. so dearest i began here's everything i know about almost everything. it applies to almost everyone and it might help you someday. [applause] >> thank you anne. that was beautiful. i want to pick up on something that you just read. you said i wake up not knowing if our leader has lumped north korea and still this past year has been just about the happiest of my life.

how come? >> well, i fell in love and i got engaged. [applause] and i will let you meet him with the purchase of each hard back book. neal allen and that was two years ago. my grandson is mine and most of us have time and it's joyful. he still got the slightly baby voice. he is lovely. he is brown and he went through the terror before the election that trump would separate us as every brown child in america felt. he says the funniest things. i love living with him. i love being a little bit older. you are so much less self-conscious and you just care so much less about what you are

doing and how people think you are doing. your feet hurt. you want to think about your feet more. [laughter] your vision is failing in your memory is shot. i had decided i had a stroke in denver because i lost so much ground since then. i think it may have been altitude poisoning. but i love not caring as much. i'm just surrounded her and i love my sunday school kids. they are usually two or three of them, different ages. i'm just so blessed. >> you mentioned you and neal got engaged predicting some people have known you for a while for your writing think of the someone is a non-traditionalist kind of a 60s, 50's and have something at your stage of life like the institution of marriage. how come? why is that important?

>> he asked me. [laughter] i didn't want to hurt his feelings. we basically have felt married since we met really and we got this funny little house big enough for my son and his son and neal's kids when they come to visit. it felt like, a few years ago i did benefit in pacific heights. i had a wonderful interview with fran jones. she said everything happen for riders happen for you. you have a child that you love as well and a little grandchild. is there anything you still dream about? i don't know why i felt that it was okay to say it in front of a thousand people. i said i think i might like to be married.

people in womack did she just say that? all she ever wanted was to get married and no one would have heard. and then i didn't expect to fall in love at 62. and with a younger man. he is 61. [laughter] that we emerged. we knew on that first day we be able to talk for the rest of our lives about books and movies and all politics. we are both very progressive so why stop? >> that's a great answer. i know the quote from the book, peace of mind is an inside job unrelated to fame, fortune or whether your partner loves you. i was really struck by that because i think so many of us

look for our approval from the outside from the career are falling in love with someone or some kind of validation. what you are saying here is the exterior validation and we know this to be true but they can't give you a piece of mind. it's an inside job. how did you come to that? >> it has taken a long time. i was raised to believe that the world if i achieved enough and had the respect of men who were especially powerful and highly respected it was a seal of approval and i would be all well. and i would have joy in life. that kills people. striving, striving to be

esteemed enough which you cannot be and will not be it is fickle. the world is fickle. the world is a male alcoholic who is still drinking and some days the world is charming and seductive and thinks you are a honeybee and the next day they can't remember where they met you or somebody else has come a long. i have tried so hard my whole life. in october i couldn't drink myself into self respect anymore and feeling knothole. i had to get to work and mostly silver women taught me that it's an inside job and i was starting to get my own respect. the girl in the 50s and a mother and a terrible marriage.

i didn't know you could be angry. my friend pat ali said if you are an american girl over 12 and you are not really angry you have missed the boat. i looked very different and felt very different and felt so isolated and scared. i had a tremendous amount of anxiety and these women and some men taught me if you want self-esteem you start doing esteem of all things. what are the sustainable things? well, service and love of people who are annoying like some of your relatives, like one of my aunts. i visit her all the time and she needs me. jesus doesn't say this is the friendly lonely people. jesus doesn't say please, please

take care of the friendly for. i show up, i learned to show up and i'm trying to think, it was kind of a novelist of the soul. i raised a child and that was so intense and crazy and hard. i didn't have any money and i started to respect anyone who could do that. >> in the book anne teaches sunday school at her church and you were saying he tried to instill this in the children. you have them repeat a mantra and that is i have value. tell us about the little girl. >> i have three kids. i go to a tiny church of about 35 people. i have two or three kids so i had to teenagers. one was really -- and one that will better in an 8-year-old girl with very severe buck teeth

just the loveliest spirit. she was just like god. when i told the children we were going to say out loud i have value it's scary to say that to yourself. you can do it in your head now that's scary. first of all you try not to think it. you were taught that you are close to being of value in if you could ring it up to a b+ or an a minus. the teenagers were just mortified. i have value. i have value. the little girl said i have value. and then she said it again. i have value. and she's so beautiful. what if i had been taught that as a little girl that i had value in whatever shape i was in

, however i was doing that i was a beautiful precious child and who anyone in their right mind would delight. there's this piece appear if you want to come up your. they are reserved for the publisher but we don't spare. come on up. we will look away. [laughter] >> one of the wonderful quotes from your spiritual mentor was when she said to you, the secret is you are preapproved. you don't have to get it that we are preapproved and we can lean into that and live from that reality. >> live from that, yes. that's the most stunning thing i've ever heard. she said it that three years ago. we are preapproved because every magazine every commercial on tv, everybody in your family,

everybody has held that carried out if he can bring this up to a certain level to burnish the surface just a little bit more brightly than gallen you can get the approval that use those seats. bonnie's position is that you come preapproved. you are preapproved and nothing could take that away. that can't be created or destroyed. that is just straw -- that is just true. >> it's like a lifelong journey. let's talk a little bit about addiction. >> i want to say something. you are preapproved. you are. and you have value. >> thank you. >> you have value as is. wow. no one remember to mention that to me when i was little. >> thank you for that.

you have spoken about your own addiction to alcohol and drugs. you have two brothers who are also addicted. in the throes of sam's addiction but he was perhaps at his worst and you are trying to save him and rescue him and fix him you write is the worst time of your life you wrote in the book. you said one of the hardest things but the most important things was to not bail him out. so much about the program is about enabling. your natural instinct is to fixx it but how did you get to the place where you know what he may just have to sit in jail. >> one of the acronyms is the gift of desperation. i think he was about 18. i was desperate and i had tried

everything i could think of. i think sometimes grace besides being spiritual grace looks like exhaustion and grace looks like just being done in giving up on having any more good ideas. he just said and you go, i don't have a clue. i thought if i got him out of jail he would die. the only thing in the history of human life not one single person has gotten another single person sober not once ever. we need and we receive a ton of support that you can't do it. it doesn't work that way. i had tried everything. boy kids hate jail because it's so boring. so boring.

so boring. you can't have your phone and you don't get any books. i prayed about it and i prayed for knowledge of god's will and the power to carry that out. are you really going to leave his beautiful 18-year-old boy in jail and i thought yeah, yeah. i had to hit my own bottom with the fixing and rescuing which is another 12 step program with -- for those of you with tiny control issues. [laughter] i was doing better and not trying to control or save him but i had a lot of good ideas, really good ideas. i sent him away and he loved it. he was gone for nine months and came back. we lived in a little 60s town and they always say in recovery

if you have a problem go look in the mirror. people are not doing things to you. our problems aren't the problems is solutions that are the problems. as a kid my outside heart is mad at me but at the solution solution to that which is to win or buy it back. i got worse and worse. i got to the point where i had little rats running around my head. i do what i do every day. they take care of people as god needs me to to be his or her hands and feet and eyes and i write. our bottom was standing out on the slow street where we live in everybody knows that i'm a sunday schoolteacher and a peacenik and the marcher and all that. i'm holding a sharpened pencil to my son's throat and that got

my attention. i said you can't yanis property anymore. he added 2-year-old inside. he started to walk away in a sake and i give you a ride to the city? this was the holy spirit because he got in the car. how do you get from where we are to getting in a car with a person -- argued doing that edward? >> no, i'm not. it's gremlins. >> we joked to the city and he got out in front of his apartment and i got out and gave him a hug. we didn't say a word. i released as best i could do everything we let go of has claw marks on it. the hardest work we'd do is releasing someone we love who made guys and we don't control

pay two weeks later he called and he said i'm a week clean and sober and he is celebrated seven years. it was because i left them in jail and because i went and looked in the mirror. i stopped hurting him with my help. we always say that help us the sunny side of control. my health was not helpful believe me. if you know me, you know that. >> let's talk a little bit about higher power which is so much a part of the 12 step program. certainly the first step and you are a christian. jesus is fundamental to you as a higher power. you include a quote from the dalai lama in the book. the dalai lama says religion is like going out to dinner with friends. everyone may order something different but still sit at the same table. i wonder what your opinion is

about a higher power and they have to knowledge of the program is going to work and even though jesus is yours you know there are a lot of christians who say jesus is the way. i have a truth that i want to share with you and i know you resist that kind if you have to believe in jesus. so a little bit about the higher power and whether or not one needs it for the program to be successful. ..

so simple whether his teenagers or little ones. there is love around you, about you, this is a beautiful little flame of the divine and don't let anyone blood without. you are safe in the arms of god and of the people who love you and us and as soon as you have a horrible secret you are not safe

anymore. i teach them they were created for love and i wrote in the last book they say that god created people because he thought we would like it here. i don't mean that in a political way that it's funny to say because we always think about god created the earth and it was beautiful but she thought we would like it here and then

there's many paths and i've never once literally my wife tried to get anybody tried to come to jesus but i hope when i show up that you can feel it you can't get from where i was to where i am now. it's not humanly possible and no human power could ever leave me. i had an addiction to every single thing you could have an addiction to accept gambling. my friends in recovery said that that is a big yes for me. i might start gambling. [inaudible] [laughter] i don't think you've ever told this story before in one of your writing. kelly ikelly is the one who wase program but what distanced her from it is this inability to

give to the higher power. if they are sure to the rather tragic story. >> this is a friend of mine who got sober when i did and was a successful realtor who grew up wealthy and the society and have had a horrible bout as an alcoholic and she loved being sober but she said they are not talking about god, they are talking about a higher power. we have a small amount in our county people turned to the mountain turned to her as they

say graveside and it's clea sidn be anything except for your own good ideas that is trying to get other people to change so that you can be more comfortable. anything but your own best thinking because that gets you to the bottom you might be able to accept love and health and she stopped being in groups but she's a lovely exuberant person and she lost 100 pounds when she got sober, started gaining it back and didn't want the most important thing is as an american you look good and little by little she ended up she had to thought coach ends on

a tuesday and they ended up at oakland general and says it's a really, really depressing place. let's get back with the caribou herd. i accept that. i can't wait for you to get back home. and she ended up blowing her brains out. a woman upstairs in her apartment and it's what i always

tell people the love of your daughter is the closest you will come to experiencing divine love while you are here. something big and beautiful but left her unconditionally. as i understand in any kind of goodness it was love. >> you beautifully put in the book she was the woman upstairs. that is a beautiful way of saying it. let's talk about family which we all can relate to. i know the wonderful quotes that you've included go spend a week

with your family. [laughter] our families are fine, you talk about flying as an acronym. family isn't easy for everybody. my parents have both past and we have a younger brother who is 56, younger brother who's five e years younger and we are all alcoholics but years clean and sober. my brother has been perfectly healed but has no money and it's a thousand dollars a pill for 90 days and he's a believer.

she had to be like 6,000 we are there every step of the way for each other and it was really hard growing up. we were all three scared, but my older brother unless so. i raised my baby brother because my mom and dad were so tense and quiet in distress, but they literally should have raised -- [laughter] they loved us and were very avant-garde but they just couldn't stand each other so it's just kind of twisted us and we all have struggled with healing and mental health and be

leaving that we are safe because i didn't feel safe as a child but i held my breath and walked on eggshells and tried to meet my father's wife because he didn't love my mom so i needed to b be an identified or six for him to want to come home. my mother didn't like my father and needed a husband and then the little one needed another into the older brother used to hit me thomas. hurt people 50 people. so we were very scared and then every one i know when i was on trial i compared my insides to everybody's outside so you see those with money, they are beautiful and have long smooth hair and appearance seemed to be happy and it was just an illusion and if you went skiing with your family and everyone

was doing well and it turned out so many kids i knew committed suicide and they lived on a lagoon which is the enclave of the county and state and skiing vacations and went to switzerland and it was all for show. they were feeling damaged and they must be annoying because their parents were so unhappy that their parents looked happy. so, i ha have come to believe so often you come upon someone who has a really happy x.. where the father is really respected of the mother with an early feminist they went into the help for them. you've got to get thicker skin

because i was so sensitive. you have to be a completely different person and then the family will fund should better. [laughter] the parents really were equals and had respect and affection. i could name maybe four of them. i never really want to sit with any of them at dinner. what would we talk about. [laughter] i'm happy for them it's amazing the people i'm close to but that wasn't the story, some of the boys were molested and there were scary grown-ups did not protect a child from being brutalized in whatever way. in the 50s and early 60s they have to side with the father because you are lined onh whoever has the power. and it wasn't exactly one way in

the 50s. i write a lot about the families that tend to come to see me and know what i'm talking about and how grief stricken by the world i was as a young child in this river was this popular book called the child. if other people that come to my events have very frightening childhoods of alcoholism or mental illness and they ran screaming from the dogma and fundamentalism. the stories we could tell.

>> you have a chapter on hate and say that it's the worst emotion of all second only to jealousy. there's a lot of vitriol in the country right now. we seem very divided politically. we've gone through the contentious supreme court confirmation hearing and it seems like there's nothing in between. and you say your pastor had a great war don't get you to let them hate. what is the secret to not letting them get you to hate them? >> it's not changing and giving the healing and about a year ago

after a year of insanity and hate victimize self-righteousness which is my calling card i thought the same thing. if you've got a problem, look in the mirror. my pastor had taken a line of something booker t. washington said a million years ago. i shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him and martin luther king took that up also in your pastor or paraphrased it saying don't let them get you to hate them because then you will lose your center and your serenity and you don't have atrocious breadth to offer the world because your talks with. and i got there. the willingness came from looking at this stuff.

because of that lack of love and the pain of their childhood this is an unloved human being but he thinks he's right and i'm bummed that and i think i might end he can be a bully. i'm not a bully so much. i know jesus loves him as much as my grandchild is a mystery of grace and grace softens one's heart and the promise is not the tools withinotthat i wasnot thef

you'ryouare having a little troh one person yo you kind of are oy with. it too promised to free you from the hatred around your heart that keeps you from being able to breathe extensively and lived in spaciousness and truth. the only thing i could change with me. i had to look at the fact that i'm judgmental and bombastic and i have my arms clenched, my arms crossed and my fists clenched. but i felt i don't know how long i'm going to live. maybe ten years, 2002 and i don't want to go out on hate.

i had to look at the parts that made me iraqi and haven't forgiven myself and when i did, i was able to get somewhere. david roche, the monologue he became pastor of the churc churf 80% sincerity. 80% if anything is a miracle. 80% of truthful and good and obedient and well behaved. so i would say that i'm about 80% less toxic right now because you take the action and the insight follows. i am a passionate progressive and i write a lot about politics

but i stopped believing he was doing something to me and i just thought we are winning right now anyway. the tide has turned. a little bit off-topic, but when the kids grows up in parkland high school i began to have hope again. when white kids drink their black brothers and sisters in the black lives matter i thought we are goin were going to be okn science and the young people were not there when we were marching for women's rights and ten years ago. it's a social justice issue and they are involved because the black lives matter and that's what it took to break the tran

trance. check again in three hours and we will see. [laughter] >> i could talk to you all night. i know you have to get to audience questions. we can do a few lightning round questions before that. how do you pray? >> in concession at our church which is about five minutes during the service i say what i think we both know what we've got on our hands here. [laughter] and then i say i'm sorry and i sometimes mean it [laughter] you know i don't mean it and i'm not contrite. i'm not able to change that right now but i know i can't get him to not love me, too recoil

and say the deal is off. but i'd wake up usually pretty early and i say a little prayer about turning my life over to god and i always say the lord's prayer because some days i do believe that we are in heaven and the kingdom is within, everything promised us aroun isd me, love me, beneath me. when people for giving loving things with one another. mr. rogers used to tell them look for the helpers after tragedy. we had a catastrophic fire last year that killed and wiped out so much in its path because of climate change. it was like a lightning round.

>> lightning round take to. i'm ready now. >> what's the hardest part of loving someone else? >> how annoying we all are. [laughter] we are so annoying. no offense. you are good. >> if you knew it was your last date on this earth, how would you spend it? >> i would spend it in prayer. i would be doing what i always do, which is seeking union with god and goodness and truth, and i would be doing radical self-love. on my last day i will only be eating dessert. [laughter] i won't even be eating fruit. i will be eating dessert and i

might smoke. it's been 32 years since i quit. i would eat crème brûlée and not floss. most of it would be about not flossing. >> what is the thing you most dislike about yourself? >> how judgmental i am. left to my own devices until someone busts me with a precious community and breaks a trance and this is good, this is bad, this person is lonely, this person i'm running from my cute littllittle white come of this r that, this happened terrible, this happened good, that's what i mos most struggle with. >> let's do some audience questions. i don't have time to look througthrough these so they maye uncensored. how do you feel about social media and have your feelings changed in the last few years? >> that's a good question. i wrote a piece you can get on

sunset magazine it's about not squandering your time in this one fleeting life that you've been issued. one is about ten years ago but it's still online. i wasn' wasn't fond of her in at five, six or seven years ago my son wrote a book of some assembly required and he was out on tour and he and the people at riverhead said we are not going to do that unless you get on twitter. they said you need what's called a social platform. i didn't want to be on facebook because i knew that is all i would do, that and not flawless. [laughter] then i discovered i could have a page. i don't follow people or they don't know how to work it. i have to supply my 9-year-old grandchild or purpose is to say

can you publish this for me. twitter i remember i agreed to do that and after, i had 100 people. i said we have 100 people at twitter and he said no way. and then i was off and running. and i really rely on twitter. there's ten people i follow that i completely rely on for their perception of what in the political happenings really mean or amount to her what he can do. >> i noticed there is a lot of these about writing and we haven't talked about that, so talking about the first chapter in the book the first sentence on writing says what a bitch. what is the greatest wisdom that you can in part writing? >> i wrote a whole chapter on

writinwriting to disable eight s like it's mostly told through the format of the workshops i started doing with my grandson in kindergarten. the things i believe in are the original word by word story when my brother hated school had a paper. in fourth grade in california you study and a term paper on each and he started. it was due the next day. my older brother did not cry and my dad sat down with him and said take it bird by bird, put it in your own words, tell me a paragraph, draw a picture and then we are going to read about them and write it in your own words and then we will do a picture and it was so profound.

the short assignments into terrible first draft it's really a typical first draft. no writer that he loved like a good first draft and i thought i would have been encouraging for me to know at an early age. my favorite line besides my dad was doctorow saying writin docts like driving at night with the headlights on you can only see a little in front of you that you cabut youcan make the whole jout way. if you are not a writer in the habit of getting your work done you think those that do what they are doing knows where that goes and where to start and things along the way and a good way to end but no one does. no one knows what they are doing until they do it. you write two, three, four drafts and then you can show it. i'm sure you show your work to someone and they criticize it, which i hate and when someone criticizes my work i think okay

that's fine we are not friends anymore because now i hate you. [laughter] but you need someone to read your work otherwise you are going to be handing in work that is not good enough yet. i have a friend in chicago who says things like i'm going to love this. the material is strong, the first page is just clearing your throat of. into the second page i got interested. most of writing is about taking a step out. my mind just went blank. they said you have to do a draft where you take out this is you love more than anything, the passages you think are brilliant

and the conversations that are so sappy. when we read it we are going to bump up against it like it great it's clever. maybe we will use it somewhere else. i arrived at the same time every day. i'm much smarter in the morning. i just am. i tried to get off to an early start. we have a grandchild we have this school is a school of jazz and all that but i try to start as early as i can and i let myself write very badly like these that are underdeveloped and birds sometimes they could be two or three hours than i gave them over angive them overl correct them if i will fix all that and usually at the last minute you go through one more time and still make good changes

you realize you are starting to hurt the book because you've gone too uptight perfectionist and if you release it to whoever is going to. a third of creativity is taking stuff out and eat racing stuff. i used to always write on paper. i love the sound of pencil on paper, but ancient sound. then i was probably the last person you'd want to come to a computer but some on botany i believone bought mei believe myd northpoint brought me back to the skyway back that was green and orange and turquoise and by god i do write things mostly on the ie path now and i always have paper and pencil with me. if you're going to write its like you've opened up a mailbox in your soul and fewer open for business and will start having ideas and