Yesterday night, Anne Lamott came and spoke at our church. It was co-sponsored by our local feminist bookstore. (I love that about our church.)

Lamott is, right now, my favorite writer. We read her book Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year when I was pregnant. Right now, I’m inhaling her book on writing, Bird by Bird. I’m only sad that I didn’t read it sooner.

Seriously! When I was working on my book, I was a wet mess. I made Jill go away for weekends at a time. I was convinced I was an idiot. I played stupid mind games with myself about how long I was allowed to read/eat/clean before I had to go back to writing and how long I had to write before I was allowed to go back to eating/reading/cleaning. It was totally torturous.

I thought that meant I wasn’t cut out to be a writer.

No, says Lamott. That’s pretty much how it is for everyone she knows. Her advice is more support and encouragement than anything else, but it’s funny and effective. At least so far. I’m only about 2/3 of the way through.

I haven’t tackled any of her books on faith, but she said something that really spoke to me during her talk. She said, “The opposite of faith isn’t doubt, it’s certainty.” She has a wonderful way of being about what she has faith in, and that she totally gets that it’s kind of incredible to believe it, but she does. It seems like the kind of book on religion that I could handle.

Speaking of books, I did buy 2 at the reading. I pretended to myself that I wasn’t going to, before we got there, but I really knew I probably would. Then I convinced myself before the reading that I was only going to buy the current book, but during the reading, I realized I had to buy Bird by Bird.

At the post-reading reception, our pastor and our friend Margaret recommended it effusively. Margaret credits it with surviving her PhD dissertation, and Gary thinks it should be required reading for all writing students. (Reno, are you listening?)

In case you were worried, Noah is still cute:

Score!