Anne Lamott

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It is the great writer Anne Lamont. And I know we've had writers on before and authors, but this is an author author, author. This is a writer, you know what I mean? Anne Lamont is a best-selling author who has written such books as Bird by Bird and Traveling Mercies and Operating Instructions. And we're going to talk to Anne about so many good things today.

We're going to talk about Jesus. And we're also going to talk about Mary. We're going to talk about being a sweet and tender kid in San Francisco trying to figure out life. We're going to talk about finding love with people who are allergic to cats and you love cats. And what do you do about it?

And we're going to talk about her new book that she wrote with that love, Her Husband, Neil Allen. And it is called Good Writing. And we're going to get into that. So lots to discuss today with Anne and Thrill that she's here. And I wanted to find somebody who loved Anne like I did and was a fan of her books.

And I figured why not go back to one of my nearest and dearest friends and friend of the pod, the one, my favorite writer, Tina Fey. Tina? Tina Elizabeth Fey, are you there? This episode is presented by Allstate. Checking Allstate First could save you hundreds on car insurance, not checking how long that recipe takes before you start cooking.

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Potential savings, very subjects to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate North American Insurance Company and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. Hi. Hi. Betty, thank you for coming on again.

You are an official friend of the pod. You've been on now, I think, 14, 15 times. I love it. I loved the one time I came on and remember, I was all dressed up like a Gwyneth Paltrow. And nobody caught on that.

That was me. Oh, you're so good. I just do a really good Gwyneth Paltrow impression. Your hair looks incredible. Thank you.

Is this a blowout? This is a blowout. And I'm putting a lot of breakage, but we're just going to press through. We're going to press through. Are you at a point now where you're getting a blowout, even if you're not working?

It's for my own sanity sometimes. I go once a week, like a 1950s lady, also because of the thought of walking around my apartment with wet hair. I can't take it. Yeah. Yeah.

Because I can't do hair. This is something I might write about because it's an exercise in hope and faith. And every time I air-dry my hair, I believe it's going to come out better. And it never does. Actually, Anne Lamont, who is an amazing writer, she's written fiction, she's written memoir, she's written essayists, she's self-revealing, she's written in all different genres that I want to talk to her about today.

She has also written about hair. And her hair, her body, coming to terms with our physical selves, and she's really funny about it, how she tries to reconcile like we all do her physical parts. That's so interesting when you were talking to Carol Burnett, too, about how old you feel. She's like, I feel 11. Did she say 11?

11. Yeah. And I get that. We do forget. There are times when you are absolutely feel that way and you absolutely forget about the carcass that you're in and how long it's been around.

And I want to do this first part because you and I have talked about Anne Lamont and how much we like her and like her writing. And I think there will be people listening to this pod today that will be die-hard fans of hers and the people that might be discovering her work for the first time. If you were to talk to somebody who had never read her, how would you describe her as a writer? I would describe her writing as very honest and funny. And it's like meeting a new friend when you meet a friend who you instantly go, oh, you're one of my people, you know, because she's so direct and she's so, yeah, she's just so unguarded in her memoirs.

And I also, I love the book by Bird. I give that book to people all the time. Anyone interested in writing any kid going to college? It's just, it's such a helpful, demystifying book about writing. And yeah, Anne's books, I've turned to them many times in my adult life for to take comfort.

They are a comfort, traveling overseas and operating instructions and some assembly required that different phases in your life, those books are all a tremendous comfort and they make you, they help you feel less insane. That's so true. Anne Lamott, I'm going to find out more about her today. I've been like reading her stuff in preparation because this is actually, this is the first writer I've ever, I mean, other than comedy writers like yourself and others. But like, this is the first like writer, writer, writer.

Frows writer. Yeah. Frows writer, yes. It's a little more daunting to have, I feel like I need to work harder. No, I think it's going to be great.

And I think I was thinking too, like, okay, what can I ask her? And I was torn up like in some ways, I was like, I can't ask her to like minister to us. I want to be like, Anne, why is God taking only the good people? Do you know Anne? Why?

What's happening? It's so funny you say that, but because I feel like my instinct is to keep saying, Anne, how can we help? Like, Anne, can you tell me? Where do you wear? And I wonder, I want to ask her, like, does she get that a lot?

Does she get people saying like, Anne, tell me how to, because she does minister in her own way. In her own way, but it's probably the tough to do on the spot. Can I tell you some things that I tried to make notes of like, what am I going to ask her? Incredible, Tina. Best dude ever.

You can cut any of this out because, okay. Please, thank you. Let me see. And I got some new glasses. Check them out.

Let's see. They're a little more square. Oh, I love them. All right, let's see. Also had sort of a game that I thought maybe we could look at Tina doing all the work for me yet again.

This guys, I just, this is an, this is an example of Tina's love language. I just want to point out, you ask her to do, hey, can you jump on for 15 minutes and Tina does research and also offers up a game that she thought of? This is how she shows her love and I am forever grateful for it. Thank you. Thank you for knowing that about me.

This is, this is my love language. Like I'm not, if I had to buy like a physical gift, I would struggle, but this is all enough. As I said before, I would like her to minister to us and try to help us understand why God is only taking the good people and leaving all the turns behind. Um, I then I started thinking like it might be because she's a creative person. I wanted to ask her some, would you rather?

Ooh, I'm going to say what those. So I'll just bang through these and you can edit them out. And you see, and would you rather only be allowed to eat pasta with butter for the rest of your life or you can have anything you want at any time, but all of your meals will be served on a moving bus. So if you're hungry, you have to go down, get the bus on my lights, man, and then you eat on the bus. Um, would you rather only be allowed to reread books you've already read or only be allowed to read new things and never look back?

Ooh, Tina, that's deep. Okay. And then this is the sort of the game I was going to propose, which is because Anne is so open and revelatory about herself in her writing, we feel like we know her. We don't really know her, but there's a game that I like to play on road trips with my family where you pick a person and then everyone, the way your family is to guess who, someone that you know and who they're thinking of is you have to answer these questions like, okay, if this person was a breakfast cereal, what would they be if this person was whatever. And so I thought, what if you and I like to try to answer these questions to describe Anne, but then ask her and see what she says and see if we get close.

Perfect. Okay. So here's the one that I had so far, which is I started with if Anne was a color, what color would she be? I'm going to say sort of a burnt orange. I was just about to say a sunset orange.

Here we go. Let's see what she says. I hope she gets it right. Because we're right. Why am I?

Look at my lights keep flickering. I'm going to pay these bills. If Anne was a breakfast food, what do you think she would be? Let's not forget she lives in California. So I'm going to say like an avocado toast.

Okay. I'm going to say, for some reason, I'm going to say sort of like a porridge with probably some kind of nuts, probably, let's say, California almond and, you know, maybe some maybe some fruits, but I think a lot of brown sugar, like a sneaky amount of brown sugar, like a brown brown sugar that renders it back to unhealthy. Perfect delicious. If Anne was a holiday within the air, what would she be? Oh, wow.

This is a good one because it really makes you think about what holidays you consider good and bad holidays. I'm sure we've talked about this on this pod and elsewhere, but Tina and I don't always agree about what makes a good or bad holiday. I like a lot of holidays. Well, the biggest example being Halloween. Right.

I like Halloween. Amy does not like Halloween. No, it's for children. Halloween is for children. I'm going to say Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving. Yeah. Thanks. I wrote Thanksgiving. Duh.

Thanksgiving duh. Okay. So I hope she gets that right. Because gratitude and community and yeah. Yep.

If, okay, what if she was a house pet? What kind of some kind of pet? I think it's a cat. Yeah. And then I also wrote down kind of that maybe she's kind of like a Greek cat, the ones that kind of mostly live outside and are pretty self-sufficient, but they come around sometimes.

Also a little bit of a bearded dragon in that there's, I feel like there's a stillness. There's a watchful eyes and that she is able to eat cockroaches and still get nutrition of it. Still can't believe you have a bearded dragon in your house. You know what will happen is eventually one morning you will wake up and that will be bearded and will be gone. Yeah, lose some house.

Yep. And you're going to fall asleep looking for it and then it's going to be on your chest over your mouth sucking your spirit out. Good luck. Good luck. Good luck meeting it.

A day of the week. What day of the week do you think I'm going to be? Well, I'm going to say it might be two on the nose, but I'm going to say Sunday. Okay. Sunday.

Come on in. You got to get that right. It's a safe and also I think it's a day where you kind of take it easy on yourself. So true. And you have a little bit of Sunday blues, which Anne isn't afraid of and isn't afraid of talking about.

I beg my lights to that. Yes. That was all I prepared. Okay. This is a perfect game.

This is so fun. Of course, Betty, you come with a fully realized written game. Oh, God bless. God bless is right. Thank you for that.

I'll see you very soon. Bye. Bye, everybody. Bye. This episode is brought to you by Visible folks, it's officially summer.

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And the mod brought me a package. A cure package. Oh my gosh. How are you? Good.

Thank you for doing this. How are you, kitty? Can I open it now? First of all, beautifully wrapped. Thank you.

Did you wrap it? I had a lot of trouble with it. I want to say I had a lot of trouble. Are you a good rapper? Can I have the ribbon back?

Yeah. The ribbon is great. Unless you really want it. No, the ribbon is beautiful. Yeah.

It's my best ribbon. Oh, what's the present? OK. There's a bunch of things. What is that?

OK, that's from Mexico. Oh, I love Mary. Oh, wow. Don't you love Mary? I mean, how can you not love Mary, right?

I want to talk about Mary. Oh, I love her. I love her. That's my favorite favorite pair of socks. I got them in Paris, but different Japan.

I only worn them once, but not for years. But I've always saved them, because they were so incredible. They're beautiful. Sometimes if you feel worried or lonely and you put on socks that someone gave you, they just can change your whole day around. Oh, and I love these.

Thank you for this. This is so nice. I hang out with a lot of sober people. And when COVID happened, the old ladies at my favorite women's group started making miracle bracelets for the young, the newcomers, the women and girls who came in who were brand new in COVID, which made everything. So I never wear these unless I need a miracle.

And that means I'm feeling very mentally ill and tweaked and clenched and clutched. Then I go get a miracle bracelet and I put it on. And I think I'm going to keep my hands off this spaceship till I hear back from God or whatever she's up to today. And so then I put that on and I'm not kidding. It works 100% of the time.

This is a beautiful, beautiful miracle bracelet. And I will say it has a little bit of like a Taylor Swift energy too, which I've never heard about this. You know what you have to look at the color. It's a blessing by blessings abound. Okay.

So I'm opening up a tiny box with what looks like a little ribbon inside and just to just let everybody know again, Anne has brought me a beautiful box of gifts. And here's one that has tiny blessings. Oh, it's a little blessing. It'll scroll. A little scroll.

Oh, wow. A little scroll with a blessing in it. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Do you know?

And as you are a blessing coming in real hot and I'm coming in with all of these gifts. I mean, you've already given me so much. And here we are with this beautiful box. The mod is with me. And I'm so thrilled.

You know, when I was thinking about being with you today and thinking about what we were going to talk about or what I should talk to you about and all that stuff, I just had the moment where a moment you would remind me to have, which is like, Oh, don't forget, you're just going to be in each other's company. Right. We're just saying. I know. I know we've got to be together.

We've had this really nice friendship, but we've never been in actual touch before. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because I feel like if I wrote to you and said, Amy, I need you. You'd say, okay. Yeah.

What do you need? And if you said that to me, I'd say, okay, I'm there. What do you need? You were. It's not funny.

We've never actually been in the same room together. I feel that too. I really do. I, you know, you are a person who I just said, Will you be my friend? And you said, Yes, I'd love to be your friend.

And it's a good, I always love to be reminded that I haven't met all the people I'm supposed to meet. And I'm not friends with all the people I'm supposed to be friends with. And I feel like you and your writing and the way you include all of us in your life and your world is why I feel emboldened to do things like that. So thank you. You are our first author that we've ever had on Good Hang.

Oh, wow. And it means a lot to me that you're doing this. When I talk to other actors and performers, I feel like we're, I don't know, we're sharing a vocabulary, but there is a funny thing that happens with writers where people like myself want to make sure that we sound smart. I know. Well, I feel that too, all the time with everyone.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And I have to do a special draft of everything I write. Why go through and I take out the lies and I go through and I take out all the stuff that I just shoehorned in so that people think I'm smarter than I am or that I'm educated. Yes. And then I take it like, it's okay, honey, you're just where you are.

It's fine. Isn't it funny? If like advice, like someone told me one time, like wait until someone asks you for advice to give it and no one ever asks. No one ever actually asks, what do you think I should do? That's so hurtful.

What do you think I should do? I think you should just keep doing what you're doing. Okay. I feel like, and do you get this a lot because I'm already feeling this way where people say to you and tell me like, do they want you to kind of emotionally lay hands on them and feel and make them feel better or different? Do you find people ask that of you a little bit?

And what's that like? Well, you know, I've been a Sunday school teacher for 32 years. I've got a trick up my sleeve. I've recently retired, but I was sitting with my kids and it's a tiny failing church. So there might be four kids there and they could be a four year old up to a 15 year old, right?

And I do this thing called loved and chosen with them. And so I might go, is there anyone here wearing a sort of navy shirt with pink's grid on it? Well, you know how little kids where they go, yes, and wave at me and I go, oh, Amy, you are loved and chosen as is. Why don't you come sit with me for a minute? And I do what it might be like as anyone wearing Pokemon shoelaces, right?

But that's what I just try to convey to people that, you know, you're loved and chosen and you're exactly where you're supposed to be. And I really care and can't get you a glass of water. You know, you're reminded me of when Mr. Rogers used to say the names at the end of his show, remember that? And he would look through and say, and I see and he would say, I need to be kind of waiting to see if your name came up.

If he could see you, it was such an example of just like little people and big people. They just want to be seen. They just want to be seen. So do we. Yeah, we all want to, I mean, that truly, if I was to sum up what you're writing does for me is it makes me feel less alone and it makes me feel seen.

And it also gets rid of the mystery of things that I think keeps us apart from each other. I want to talk about all of that today and all the stuff that you've written. And I kind of want to start, if it's okay with talking about the stuff that you write currently in real time, all the time, because you're here to talk about your new book that you wrote with your wonderful husband, Neil, what are your steps when you're working on something where you were calling yourself out, where you're taking you? Oh, I edit me the way I would edit you. I edit me with a lot of gentleness.

I'd say to me or you, I'd say, you know what, Amy, I love this. But I think maybe it goes somewhere else, not in this piece you just handed me, which means it doesn't work here at all. But I would say it in that way. Yeah. It just feels a little bit like on the first page, like you're sort of clearing your throat a little bit, but on page two, you start to get into it.

And that's where you caught my, you know, that's how I would talk to you. Now also, I know your parent of sense also. And you know, nothing worked, right? But bribes and threats. I mean, anything else?

No, bribes and threats. So I'll say, okay, Annie, if you write this one passage, we're going to stop and go for a walk. We're going to stop and watch MS now. We're going to stop and have a half a sandwich now and, Yeah, it's at the end. And threats, if you don't.

And so I'm strict and friendly with myself when I'm working and writing. And I do a lot of bribes and threats. And somehow, you know, and then I write incredibly terrible first drafts. And then I go back and I take out half. Yeah.

I take out half and that part so painful. I don't know if it's the same with you as a comedian, but it's like you hate to just lose something, you know, you loved and thought really worked for. Well, anytime you think anything works, it usually goes away. Like, it's always like, oh, that's the best joke. And it never makes the movie, never makes the sketch because you just, you've become so attached to it.

You're just like in love with it. You could lose this first piece and you're like, my favorite Joe. I know. We can be friends anymore. I know.

Well, Jessica Mitch were the great writer from Oakland said you have to kill your little darlings. Yeah. And you have to go through and all those lines I used to try to get you to think something about me. Yes. But then I'm smarter than better than more ironic.

Anything. I just have to cut. Because then I'm going to hand it to my husband, my current husband, Neil Allen. And he is going to notice it. And he's going to need this and he's going to mark it.

So it's better just to do it before. Now you refer to Neil as your current husband. Why? He's also my first husband. Yeah.

I got married three days after I started getting social security. And I cannot wait to talk to you about that because the way you write about and have shared your feeling about partnering up and later in life is like, I've gotten so much from it. But before we get there, I discovered you with Hard Laughter, which was that your first book? My first book. That was 45 years ago.

Wow. How old were you when you got that book? I was 24 when I sold it. I think I was 25 when I published it. Yeah.

I mean, it was just an amazing break. How did you get that first break? How did you go from writing and being published? Well, my dad's agent had always agreed to represent me if I ever wrote anything representable. My dad was a well-known writer.

And I kept saying these stories and you know what they do before you kind of hit, before you really come off of something. Oh, it's like when a kid makes you something like an ashtray out of clay with a dance for the cigarettes, and I said, did you make that so much? She was always like, oh, did you make that? And they were just terrible. And then my dad got sick, which as you know, from Hard Laughter, he got a metastasized melanoma in his brain.

And we knew he wasn't going to make it because no one ever had yet in 77. And so I started writing a book about how a family stays afloat when an anvil has dropped on the family, when the center of the end of the family is not going to be there forever. And a lot of it was that we were laughing, you know, and it was black gallows humor. And I've always said that laughter is carbonated holiness. If you're laughing in a really tough patch of time, you're on Holy Ground.

And my brothers are funny. And I want to try to love letter to my dad so he would know how my brothers and I felt about him. And so I changed it a bit in that there was always a little bit of hope in the novel that he was going to be okay, which we knew he wasn't. And I sent off six chapters and my agent loved it. And it was really rough.

You know, it's just like she saw the diamond in the rough or something, you know, and she showed it to an editor at Viking in Cork Smith. And he loved it. It was a strange experience. And you were writing it while your dad was still, right? And I finished it and sold it while his brain was still working.

The last eight months or so, he was really not very functional. But he called me to tell me and had read it and loved it. And I mean, that was like the great miracle of my life. Wow. Yeah.

But the first two reviews I got were prepub reviews, publishers weekly in Kirkis. And I got him in the mail. I mean, I don't know if your audience is even familiar with waiting for mail to find out news about your career and your finances. But I got these in the mail for my agent and they just were terrible reviews. They just said we hate her.

She's right about thinking she's a loser as demonstrated in this new novel. So you get your first terrible reviews and you have to make a decision there about what you're going to do with them. What do you do with them? Well, then I got it. It was amazing.

Well, luckily I was still drinking at the time. So I got through that. And then I didn't have a cent literally in the world. But by hook and by crook and by good friends, I got the money together to go to New York for a little bit of a conversation. And Ann Tyler, one of my favorite writers to this day, wrote this rave in the New York Times book review.

Wow. So right. So then you think I've arrived. I'm the queen of the hill. I'm the total princess of all the earth.

And then of course, the next day you get a bad one. Totally. This episode is brought to you by Apple Watch. Your heart tells the story of your health. And with the new Apple Watch series 12, you can understand it better than ever.

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I was reading something you wrote and I shared it with my friends just the other day because you do often engage with the world and you kind of like tell us like I know it's bad out there. You do the opposite gas lighting basically which is like here's the bad things that happen this week. I saw it too. What should we do about it? And what should we do about it is never anything that feels, I don't know, it just feels simple and right and real and we're all kind of working it out together.

Would you mind reading something that you wrote? No. Okay. And this little section here because I wanted to ask you about it. It was when you were 68 and you were writing about that year.

Okay. Okay. But turning 68 means you weren't born yesterday. Turning 68 means you've seen what you've seen. Ukraine, Sandy Hook, the permafrost, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

By 68 you have seen dear friends literally ravaged by cancer, lost children, unspeakable losses. The midterms are coming up. My mind is slipping. My dog died. Really to use the theological terms.

It is just too freaking much. Regrettably by 68, one is both seriously uninterested in a vigorous debate on the existence of evil or even worse, a pep talk. So what does that leave? Glad you asked. The answer is simple.

A few very best friends with whom you can share your truth. That's the main thing. By 68, you know that the whole system of our lives works because we are not all nuts on the same day. You call someone and tell them that you hate everyone and all of life and they will be glad you called. They felt that way three days ago and you help hold them out of it by making them laugh or a cup of tea.

You took them for a walk or a target. The idea that we are all nuts on the same day, talk about a blessing and it is exactly what we are still dealing with right now. What do we do? The world keeps spinning out of control. Things feel darker and darker and darker.

What do we do? We make each other tea. We try to shine a little brighter. We laughter. Shines us up a bit.

So goodness and fresh air and radical self care. You might binge on below deck or don't tell anyone but people magazine. Always. Right. Radical self care.

We do with a close friend. You know, with a close friend. If she is an even worse shape than you are, you are the one that says I'm on my way. I'll be there in 15 minutes. Bring you all that.

I mean, I talk about it a lot here and just kind of show by example of the friends that give so much to me and that I feel so proud to be a part of their group. But I feel like female friendship is different. It's different. Why is it different? Well, it's different because we have always been so much more emotional and truth telling than men.

They weren't raised to tell the truth. They were raised to look good. They were raised to seem or be powerful or to amass more prestige and power and money and whatever. And we understood, I mean, women, our bodies are messy. The work of women is messy with a, you know, in the Christian tradition with the last at the cross and the first at the cave, you know, and we're there for birth and death and we're comfortable.

We get comfortable with it. You know, I was literally saved by girlfriends the way other people are saved by Jesus or Buddha. And I mean, that literally, I was literally saved by chapter books too. And I mean, that literally, I meant that no matter what the world threw it with me, I could still be with Shelley Adams tomorrow when I'm six years old and I'm 72 soon and Shelley Adams and I still walk two or three times a week. But when I, when the world has just thrown all this horrible bleak stuff at me and getting bed with Ann Tyler or Barbara King solver and there's going to be truth and there's going to be laughter and there's going to be insight and there's going to be, it's going to be comfort my entire soul.

And, and I feel that, and I love a lot of men writers, a lot of men, and I've been influenced them, but I turned to women writers for truth and comfort. Yes. I just do. I feel the same. And I, and I think you're, I feel like by reading your writing over the years, I've also got to walk with your friends.

Like I, you bring your friends in your work a lot and you do that wonderful thing that is so loving, which is, because to me, teasing is kind of a love language. And the way you tease when your friends tell you the truth, like when you talk about horrible Bonnie, for example, like, could you, could you speak of horrible Bonnie was my mentor when I first got sober, which was in 1986. Then I was called her horrible Bonnie because no matter what I had on my mind when I called her, it might be disgusting, like for a new drunk, barely sober woman. And she'd always say, Oh, dearest, I am so glad you call. And then she would say, everything was going to sort out at the end, which is what John Lennon says.

John Lennon says, everything will work out in the end. It doesn't look okay. It's not the end, you know, and so Mary Baker, Eddie, the mother of all new thought of Eckhart told Mary Ann Williamson, everybody says that, but Bonnie would say it in this loving mother, grandmother voice. And I first go, Oh, no, I don't think you're, you know, I don't think you understand that the complexity of it. And she would just say, I know, darling.

And so I was called her horrible Bonnie because she'd always ruined my bad moods and she'd always make me have hope and faith again. And that when you're with people that help you understand that it's the inside person that just needs to feel to connect with their loving, sweet, generous heart, that is literally what heaven on earth is like, is when you connect with how generous your heart is, even though your mind is like, you know, cranky and cringy and trying to figure out who to blame. In my case, I think you're fine. But in my case, usually the default step is to figure out who to blame. Right.

And then I can relax. Oh, I mean, and also, you know, I don't know about you, but of the two emotions, anger and hurt, I'd much rather be angry than hurt. I mean, angry all the way, all the way. So I much rather be mad than sad. Oh, of course.

Sad is sad is not where I want to live. No. So let me tell you what is in between those. I think it's one of the things I wrote down. What keeps happening when we feel that separation from like, if we've been hurt or if we've gotten the bad review or we've gotten the neglected or kind of blown off or whatever, paradoxically, what I feel when I think a lot of the women I'm close with, you just go into that shame spiral, right?

Instead of just crying or feeling grief. Yeah. So tell people what operating instructions for people who haven't read it is about. Okay. Let me go back and say, when my dad got sick, I did what you do.

You go to the library and you look for books by people you respect who have been through a similar circumstance and you read how they got through it. That's our only hope in mind most of the time. But there were no books in the 70s about cancer because it was unseemly. You can talk about death or dying. You know, it's just like, whoa, what a buzzkill, right?

And so when I had a baby, I went to the library to find books and I was single and I was broke and I was usual. And there was just nothing about the fact that it can be so boring. Yeah. And I had infant and pretty soon, the infant got colic and I started right. I started keeping the journal and I'd write things like that one night just strung out on ex-diet exhaustion.

It's unbelievable. I thought about wrapping up my baby really carefully in blankets and putting him on the porch for the night just so I could get one night's sleep because you know it's like put your own oxygen, a mouse come first. And no one had written stuff like that yet. No. Or I had written at one point I thought he had gone down and I could cry with my love for him.

And then I wrote, oh God, now he's raised his loathsome reptilian head. And no one had written that before. That's right. And so people were like, oh my God. So then the next book after that was my first writing book, which was called Bird by Bird.

Right. So it went from that to Bird by Bird. And then I think I wrote some more novels. Now, when I think about operating instructions and I remember reading it before I had kids and I didn't understand, I understood later what you were actually really talking about about that. Those early times when you feel sleep deprived and like the only one getting it wrong and all that stuff, you're right.

What you did, it's still transgressive still to say I'm not completely and madly in love. I'm actually really stressed out and I'm not feeling the bliss I'm supposed to feel or I don't think I'm doing it right. Or there's still this crazy amount of pressure for young mothers to have to instantly be in love with a new role that they have. Right. So the most apparent is just something that just hadn't been talked about at all.

Even the realization that your parents are people is a relatively new idea that your mother was a girl and that your parents are people. It's not that old of a thought. Yeah. Yeah. It's true.

So I don't want to do the same thing with writing because all existing writing books said if you did certain things, probably an outline and this and that and the other that it would things would go well and you would almost certainly sell your book and then you would have really, really good self esteem all the time. And I wanted to say this is how I do it. I sit down and it goes badly most days. I sit down with the bad self esteem and the raging ego pin pong game and I start writing and it's awful. It's unreadable.

It's God awful, but I have a secret. I keep my butt in the chair and I know to write really terrible first drafts. I know and a lot of writing students don't believe that the writers they love most in the world. The books they love most in the world began as God awful overly long purple prose first drafts. And do you ever find other writers pushing back on the idea or your ideas of that?

Because when you say that what you're doing is you're opening up, you're like, you know, people always believe there's some kind of special room that only certain people are allowed to go into and there's certain vocabulary that keeps people out of the room. And when you open up the door and say, come into the room or here's how we do it here. Other people that are in the room don't always like it. Do you ever feel that or did you ever feel that when you were first writing about writing? Almost everyone I've talked to ever about writing said, oh, that's the same with me.

Yeah, but I just keep my butt in the chair and I use bribes and threats. Now it's funny because yesterday Nate Silver, the legendary Nate Silver out of nowhere, not referencing me said, people talk about writing first drafts and that it's okay not to get it right as you're going. So I find that a great waste of time or something like that. Well, that must be so nice to have a fully formed thing. To have a fully formed thing.

It's like when right wing Christians tell you what the truth is or anything. God, that just must be so nice to be so sure of yourself. Like I never am. Yeah, no one ever is. Yeah.

Well, okay, you talk about right wing Christians and Christianity and we've talked a lot about spirituality and you did you find your faith through sobriety? Is that when you became? Well, I found my faith drunk. I'd always believed in God and my parents were asius. So we weren't and I know you were race Catholic and that's a very beautiful way to open race.

I mean, some issues. I was living across this houseboat literally twice the size of this table with a sleeping loft in Salsito. And I would be so hungover and I'd walk across the street to this flea market that was in this economically totally deprived place where the crack epidemic had taken place. Mostly people of color, six churches in a place of 2,000 people. And there was this because when you're hungover, you want kind of greasy food and a lot of coffee.

And I would hear music from the civil rights movement coming out of this one ramshackle church with this horrible Charlie Brown Christmas tree out in front of Pine Tree that, you know, it looked like Bertrand Russell at the end and I could hear this music coming and I'd been raised on civil rights music and on Joan Baez and the weavers and Pete Seager. And I knew all the words and sometimes I think grace means you've just run out of any more good ideas and I'd run out of any more good ideas. I tried everything. I tried to stick to four or five social drinks and the non-habit forming marijuana on it and some pills and one day at a time and I couldn't. Yeah.

And I went and I sat down in this church and the thing was they know there's like 30 or 40 people, same church, but that I've been at all these 41 years now and they didn't try to hassle me. They didn't try to get me to sign on, they come to Bible study or to figure out anything or to figure out who shot the Holy Ghost. They just could see I was desperate and lonely. That's the G.O.D acronym of the gift of desperation. And I sat there and I was like desperate but like crabby, you know.

And I couldn't relate to people but they caught me water. I always left before the sermons because I didn't want too much of the Jesus stuff. Yeah. And a little by little it just ground me down. A little by little I started staying and I just always got and I got when I was drinking and trying to be other religions that Jesus was his sweet, sweet shepherd, you know.

And he just and he had this incredible mother and that it was the ultimate as his program and that as I was, which was horrible and messy and promiscuous and nuts, all of charming. I mean, had a perfect life. I had I had three books published. I was well known in the community. Everybody I loved lived in my county, my mom, my brothers, my cousins, and but my insights were like Swiss cheese and little by little I could kind of bear the Jesus part.

And so I started sticking around. And one day I was walking to my house boat on the long the dock and I just this is going to sound like I'm crazy but I could just feel him and I could feel like if a little cat, a little stray cat was running alongside me and I didn't want a little stray cat. And all my friends are progressive activists. They all worked at Mother Jones at the time and it was like I was kind of kicking the little cat away. Go away because you feed a little stray cat.

It's not a stray cat anymore. You probably own a cat now, right? I'm not stupid. So but then I finally just stopped and I don't this was grace, which is spiritual WD 40, you know, but that long sin red straw that's in it squirted me and I just said, okay, fine, come on in. So has it now that that little cat came?

What is that? What how is your faith changed? Like I think for people when they think about faith, I think sometimes they think of it like a bank account that just you know, like the account that gets bigger and bigger, like you get more and more and more faithful. Yeah. Is that how it works?

Does it go away and come back? Does the cat go away sometimes and come back? Does it? It's going away because I do the work, you know, I do the practice and I study and I study. And the practice keeps it.

And I do, I read this Bible a little bit every morning and my friends believe in God and a lot of them believe in Jesus and in a non-annoying way. And I just, that has, I mean, my best friend died as you know from operating instructions when I was not that sober. And how do we again? When she died? Yeah.

How old was she? She was 37. I think she was 37 too. And I got sober when I was 32 and had a three year old, you know, two year old and it was very, very scary and I wrote about it a lot in operating instructions. But, you know, I don't have an interesting or sophisticated theological and no different than that day with the straight cat.

I have the theological understanding like a really bright second grader, you know, and I don't have conversations. I'm not asked to have conversations about the triune nature of the deity, you know. People will say, I can't feel God anymore. I can't feel God right now. And I'll say, well, good, why don't you sit down and have a cup of tea or do you want to go shopping or go for a walk or do you want to lie down on the couch with me?

And so I don't have interesting intellectual answers about faith. I just can feel it. It's truth in me. I feel it in my heart. It's like I have a heart cave and in it is my little one, my little Annie that I was with and my big old Annie and Jesus and Mary and I can just feel him.

And I, for whatever reason, I just let it go with that. Yeah. I mean, even my question is interesting that I'm realizing because I think there's like this idea that there's some deep second chamber, third chamber to all of it, right? Like, that there's some, like, did you get to level 10? I did that.

I mean, there's none. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, That's the big thing you find out in every department of life, which is like, you think there's some secret room with the cooler, people smarter, people more of all people are and again, there is another is just where we are, where our Baths are, where our hearts are. I know. Yeah. I keep it very simple.

I keep it very practical. Can I ask you something? Yes. Do you think this is going okay? Yeah, I think this is going great.

Okay. Good. Let's ask Jenna though. She's listening. Okay, good.

Good. I think this is going great. And, thank you for asking that. And I love that you asked that, because what I wanted to say about like you are willing checking in, like it's important to check in, but that is, that's not always easy to do to check in and like kind of put, dip your toe into the, like there's the way in which we can kind of all live in our worlds of, I don't know, our comfort, comfortable worlds. And then we can sometimes, especially when we get older, I know for myself, have to kind of force ourselves to get uncomfortable.

Like we comfort is really nice. Right. Right. We also discover that it's in the discomfort and the dark nights of the soul that the growth and the healing happens because I would be four foot seven if I had had anything to do with how, how I was going to grow. I don't like discomfort.

I don't like growing pains. I don't like mess. It makes me crazy. I feel like every year's and I've discovered that that is where it's going to happen, is like I'm not. And Jesus doesn't have a magic wand and tap you on the head and say, go forth, little one.

You know, I'll be happy in choice. But Jesus and Jesus in the distressing form of other people usually sits down next to you shoulder to shoulder and says, you know, I can just sit here for as long as you need and we'll be together and things will change. So do you believe this idea of like other, other difficult people are gurus for you? You know that? It was like, oh, yeah.

She's your guru. She's your guru. Like this horrible person is in your life for some reason. I feel that later. Yeah.

I can tell when I'm really uncomfortable because somebody's annoying me or they just seem so stupid or so wrong. I can tell that something good is going to come up in me, but I don't want to sit next to them at the table. And it's like in one of the many 12 step programs, I mean, there's one for people with tiny control issues. They use the word intimacy to mean into me. I see.

And when I have that feeling of I'm seeing in me, I don't love it. I'm not avoiding the beautiful, generous, silly, playful. I'm avoiding the parts that are scared and judgmental, that endless judgment. But you know, if you want to heal it, you've got to reveal it. And as soon as I can see it and I share it with my best girlfriend, I start to get better.

You know, people say, oh, let go and let go. And I just want to poke them in the forehead with a plastic fork like they're a baked potato. Because if I could have let go and let go, I definitely would have trust me. Well, that's when people say like, oh, you just have to feel your feelings. And I'm like, you got to be kidding me.

Oh, stop. Please. Like, there's got to be another way that actually feeling your feelings. I know, no, definitely. But I share it with a friend because then you at some point you start laughing.

Maybe you cry because a person saying, you know, I have that exact same thing. And I have a lot of shame around it. And it's a kind of short core shame that you might be disgusting or not. OK, it's not truth, though. It's not truth.

It's something that like my husband, Neil, we need to segue to Neil in a minute. But he does his work with him. I love Anne is just like quietly controlling this. And I know I don't want to kidding me. There's nothing I love more than a woman and a woman who's a little older than me who I respect having control issues.

OK, good. Let's talk about Neil. OK. Can you tell everyone you're me too? How did you meet?

We met on match and match.com. Well, there's a match wing for older people. I forgot what's called our time. And but I'm pretty well known in that area. And had you dated before?

I've been with a man for six years. And I hadn't been with anyone for a couple of years. OK. Yeah. And I've been in relationships before.

But I'd never gotten married. And then I decided I would learn to date because I had never had to date. You just certainly when you're drinking, you don't have to date. You just know you're going to be with this person and they have cocaine or they have money or they have a car or they can get your cigarette lit or whatever. And after I got sober, I just didn't know how to date.

But I always kind of knew who like the next hostage was going to be. You know, and you know how to sit down and have coffee and get to know them. So I decided I wrote a piece. It's online. You can find it if you put in the lot and match.com.

I had a terrible year of dating. Like I did this one guy who had this beavis and butt head laugh. And I had to sit through the whole coffee and I was just going, like that guy in the street just going, no, no, no, I was like that. And people were men were bringing me manuscripts, stuff like that. Oh, well, oh, God.

And one man said right before a third date said, is it too soon to bring you up plot treatment? And I said, yeah, a little bit. And I never saw him again. But so I learned how to date and I learned a lot about who I am and what I needed. This what I wanted my whole life was a man who, if he were a woman, would be my very best girlfriend, my ultimate best girlfriend.

I'd never had that. I'd always had it. I'd been with a really, really nice man. And I'd, but it wasn't he wouldn't have been my best girlfriend because he didn't have the depth and the kind of the layers, the archeological layers that a woman or the lasagna that a woman's being would present as. And so then I saw this tall handsome guy on match on our time and he was spiritual and he I thought over educated.

And but he seemed like had a nice sense of humor. So I wrote to him and we wrote a little back and forth. Well, it turned out he's allergic to cats. And I have a cat and I live for the cat. For me, it goes Jesus, the cat, everyone else.

Right. And so I thought, well, I can't, I, my grandson lives with us. So I couldn't be with somebody who was allergic to the cat because I'd have to go to his house all the time. And I basically don't like to leave my house. And so I, so we sort of, it didn't turn into anything about four months later.

I saw this really attractive man with beautiful face and a profile. And I wrote and I said, Oh, I love your profile. And he wrote back. You already rejected me. I think I'm not Jesus enough.

And I wrote back. I could care less how Jesus, you are. It was just the cat. And he said, well, I have lived with cats. I'm violently allergic.

But if you put brewers, yeast and their kibble after a week, I won't be very allergic to the cat. And I thought, Oh, it's a trick. That's a hack. And so I thought he was just either trying to get me to do whatever or he needed an age or something. And we got together and we've never been apart for a single day unless one of us has been out of town and that was coming up on 10 years ago.

So that was how we met cute. No, I'm going to say going into. And I know. And he would be my best girlfriend. Yeah, he would.

He just loves. He loves to chat. You guys have shared interests. He loves. He loves.

He loves the bigness of you. He does. You don't have to dim your light around him. And he loves God. And it's not quite the same, but it's a, you know, it's so much the same.

But is it true that you wouldn't have minded if he didn't love God? It would have been hard for me if he didn't have God in his life, because it would have been like not speaking English, but his what he is. I would say more Eastern has more Eastern traditions in it. But one of us will be writing. He's a very accomplished writer.

And he might come in and say, can we talk about spirit? And I'll go, yeah. And he'll write down all usually it's me saying, can we talk about this soul and then I'll scribble down everything he says and then steal it all. Or he'll do the same. And so we have this we jam, you know, these endless jams and riff because on the first or second first date, I think we both found out how much time we both spent with dying people.

He was a hospice volunteer. And I've had many, many people who died and I've been with many people because their families have asked me in because I'm not afraid of it, you know, because I went through with my dad and Pammy and a lot of people by now and we talked about that. Well, who can you talk to like a date? And when he said, Oh, yeah, I'm a hospice volunteer. I want you've got to be kidding.

Like, and we both had decided we wanted to play ripple at our memorial services. And so then three years later, he asked me to marry him and we played ripple for our processional. I mean, it's so again, kind of getting back to what we said in the beginning. It's so it's such a good reminder to remember that we have not met all the people who are supposed to me. We have not loved all the people who are supposed to love.

Like life is still like if we are lucky enough to be talking today, like, I know, like I thought about this thing when I woke up today that I haven't hanging in my house and I thought of you, which is that very famous Dalai Lama quote, like, every morning when you wake up, think to yourself, I am so fortunate to have woken up. I have one precious life. Like, it's just basically like if you are still around, you're still around. Yeah. So you and you wrote a book, good writing.

And the book is about, you know, good writing. Yeah, about kind of like it's I really like it because it is, but it's like Neil's very smart and helpful ways to get your sentences better and then and comes in to say, this reminds me of something and wait a second. It's listening to a conversation. It is a conversation. Yeah.

The subtitle of good writing is 36 rules to improve your sentences. And Neil had them on our first date. And I've been teaching writing since before Milton Burrell, you know, that's my father would say. And and he had these rules. He was a journalist for 10 years at the Bergen County record.

And they were all rules like, like, you know, like layer your senses, bring in sense, bring in the sense, take out the boring stuff. I forgot what rule it is, but you know, right from good verbs, you know, you just say, Amy walked across the studio. You'd say Amy staggered across the studio, Amy Tiptode, Amy Slunk across the studio, Amy Dancer, you know, and they were all brilliant rules. So then about two years ago, he said, when turning those rules into a book, I said, oh, that's great. It's a wonderful writer.

So he wrote sort of meditations on each of the rules. And then I became, then I became convinced that somewhere in this book, there was a place for me and I started tugged on his shoulder one day. I said, you know, I know something about writing. I wrote a very successful book. And once and I said, I'd really love to annotate your rules, you know, and lighten it up a little.

I mean, his rules are great. And so I would come in and then I write my meditation, so it should frequently frequently point out that he is over educated. And there are rules that I think people can ignore. And instead, in my experience, what might work better is. Well, I like your, the challenger in me likes the idea of like someone having a rule and then someone getting to poke the rule.

Like, and a good rule can can stand the poking. Totally. OK, we do this thing on the pod where we ask somebody who is a friend of yours or a fan of yours or someone who loves your work or loves our guests to ask them a question. And I really thought about who to ask for this. And I realized I'm like, I should just ask my old friend because my old friend, Tina Fey is a huge fan of you.

Oh, she is. And she's an incredible writer. She's one of the best writers I know. And her and I have talked about you and your books and your writing. And so Tina and I were talking about you just, I hope your ears were burning in a good way.

Thank you. We were talking well behind your back. And we were talking about the ways in which your book provides comfort and your books, your work, your posts, all of it feel like it is a way in which in a world with so little comfort that you keep doing that for us. And we're so grateful for it. And women pass around your work like what I imagine they did with medicine back in the day.

It's really special. And I'm thrilled that she wanted to talk about you and to me about you. So she had some questions for you. OK. Tina was like, I want to me to give you some, would you rather?

OK. Would you rather only eat pasta with butter for the rest of your life? Or you can have anything you want to eat at any time, but all of your meals have to be served on a moving bus. And pasta. OK.

Would you rather be allowed to reread books you've read and that be the only thing that you're allowed to read or only new things and never look back? I read only books I read and left. OK. OK. We've answered some of these for you.

You tell them. Hopefully you'll get it right. And if you were a color, what color would you be lavender? Oh, we both got it wrong. We both have the same color.

What did you say? We both said like a orange, like a sunset orange or a burnt orange. Because I don't look good in that color. I don't like color. Sorry.

We got it wrong. So I'm OK. If you were a breakfast food, what do you think you would be? Oh, yeah. She nailed it.

Tina said some kind of porridge. Yeah. I love you. If you were a holiday, what would you be? I love Easter.

We should have picked that one. Yeah, I heard a great line or read it somewhere. It said we are Easter people living in a good Friday world. And I love that so much because it's such a good Friday world. It's so good Friday world is where they crucify Christ and it's dark and the sky turns black and there's no hope anywhere.

And all we see is power and evil and corruption and cruelty. And then two days later, we see the spring. We see resurrection. We see new life. And so, you know, the cross looked like a big wind for the Romans.

And then two days later, no, it's Jesus and Mary going, we're OK. You're OK. Come with us. Yeah. OK.

What kind of house pet would you be? OK. Yeah, we got that right. Yeah. A specific kind of cat.

No. And what is the best? What do you love about cats? I just love it. It's like having a little monkey living at your house and they're so pathetically needful of your love, even though they pretend.

They are. Oh, yeah. My cat is an embarrassment. She is so desperate for it. And also she's stand opposition.

I mean, depending on their mood. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I just I always had cats and I always knew that if I could find a cat, I was going to be OK, I wasn't alone anymore.

Hmm. Yeah. I can answer too easy. I mean, dogs love. I'm not going to name names, but dogs love anyone.

But cats, you don't know where they are. No, it's awful. And I don't like that. I want to say about that in one of these books about how I was going to get buttons made that said the kitten is not dead. The kitten is in the living room because I went through the kitten is dead with Neil.

And I remember that saying no, the kid is not dead. The kid is hiding. The kid is probably in the living room. Yeah. The hiding is stressful for me.

I like I like the path that comes to comes out to greet you. Yeah. And what day of the week would you be? I love Sunday mornings. Not because I'm going to church because it's Sunday morning and it's a Sabbath.

And you are commanded to do as little as possible. And I believe rest is a sacred act. And I, you know, it's the end of the week and it's just such a luxurious, warm blanket of a day for me. And the people that are listening, like Sunday blues is a real thing. And it's definitely a thing when I have kids getting ready for Monday for school.

Like that feeling of dread. We talked about it a little bit. How do you? Can you give us all as I'm asking you to do this, even though I want to put you on the spot. But like this feeling like what do you do with your dread?

How do you break it apart so it doesn't get so big and and and snowball into something big? I do a lot of breastwork. And I always forget about that. I do breastwork and I pray and I call a girlfriend or I go find Neil or my son and I say, do you have a minute and I say what's going on? And as soon as you share it with somebody, it's lessened.

That's the only way I've ever been able to let go is to share it with somebody. Yeah. And then it gets so much. It's dilutes it. It's so true.

And so and it always goes back to that simple thing of like just not trying to go in your space capsule and take care of it by yourself. Right. Figure it out is a terrible slogan. It's a terrible slogan. And and breath is Holy Spirit and breath is life.

And I pray I say, you know, I wrote a book called help. Thanks. Wow. The three essential prayers. And I'm usually saying one of them, Oh, me, I am in a hole too deep to get myself out of or I'm going, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you. That you got me out of that hole. Thank you. Or I'm stepping outside and going, wow, it's so beautiful in the world. It's so fresh and blue and the instincts are starting to bloom in California.

The paper whites are blooming. And so I'm always saying one of those three prayers. Yeah. Now it's work. Well, I'm going to say, wow, back to you, Annie.

Thank you. Thank you for doing this. You're so I mean, I I'm just thank you for my presence. You're welcome. Yeah.

Thank you for my hand. Yeah, with Mary and the goal. Give it up for Mary. Shout out to Mary. Shout out to Mary.

Yeah. Shout out to Mary, the original pop star. Right. Right. Who told that little boy Diego, don't be afraid.

I'm here. That's what she says. Now she says it to us both right now. Don't be afraid. I'm here.

You're OK. Oh, and I'm on everybody. Thank you for being here. Thank you. I mean, so much.

Thank you, and I'm on so much for joining us. And for today's polar plunge, I feel like I feel compelled to say what Anne would say, which is to remind you that good behavior and good action can be small and tender. It doesn't have to be a giant, I don't know, sweeping gesture. So on behalf of Anne's good works and in an attempt to just kind of, I don't know, put a drop of goodness, a molecule of goodness back in the world, maybe mow your neighbor's lawn or shovel their driveway or leave a gift for them. Maybe put a little gift on your neighbor's porch today, cookies that you made, I don't know, and right from your secret admirer, but that might be weird.

So don't do it like that. But you know what I mean? Just do something for your neighbor. Think about people around you. Do something small as Anne would say, give them water, give them a cup of tea.

Say hello to people who perhaps haven't been said hello to today. Anne always reminds me to do that. I'll do the same and pass it on. Thanks for listening to Good Hang. See you soon.

Bye. You've been listening to Good Hang. The executive producers for the show are Bill Simmons, Jenna Weiss-Burman and me, Amy Poehler. The show is produced by the Ringer and Paper Kite for the Ringer production by Jack Wilson, Kat Spillane, Kaya McMullen, and Elia Zanaris for Paper Kite production by Sam Green, Joel Lovell, and Jenna Weiss-Burman, original music by Amy Miles.