She's refreshing and unorthodox, and oh how she loves Jesus.
Here are a few highlights I managed to gather as I listened.
In her own words, as best I remember...Anne Lamott.
-If you want a good life, read!
-If you want to write, put your butt in the chair and keep it there.
Stop NOT doing it. Stop co-signing on your own rationalizations.
Stop writing messages. If you have a message, send a telegram. People don't want to read a message, they want to read a story.
Start where you are and assume it will go badly. A lot happens in failure, messes, and mistakes.
Create that which you love to come upon.
'Writing a like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' (E. L. Doctorwo) You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard. (Anne Lamott, from Bird by Bird.)
"Literature is asking us to pay attention...
pay attention to the world
and all that dwells therein
and thereby learn at last to pay attention
to yourself
and all that dwells therein."