so what mr. poopy pants

sometimes one has to write when they dont want to

or dont know what to say

or dont want to say what is asked of them

In my fiction workshop last year we read a great piece. Ever since I read it I hand it out like candy. I'm the Jehovah's Witness of Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts." If you are a writer you already know why I love this article. You can read it in whole here. I hope you do.

Maybe I am just a crazy as every other writer but I get this overwhelming chorus of voices. (You tell someone you hear voices and they start to look at you differently, but I know we all hear them... right?) This is what she says about the chatter:

Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a mason jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it in the jar. And so on. Drop in any high-maintenance parental units, drop in any contractors, lawyers, colleagues, children, anyone who is whining in your head. Then put the lid on, and watch all these mouse people clawing at the glass, jabbering away, trying to make you feel like shit because you won't do what they want--won't give them more money, won't be more successful, won't see them more often. Then imagine that there is a volume-control button on the bottle. Turn it all the way up for a minute, and listen to the stream of angry, neglected, guilt-mongering voices. Then turn it all the way down and watch the frantic mice lunge at the glass, trying to get to you. Leave it down, and get back to your shitty first draft.

Great right? And we can all use the jar image in every day life. Coworkers? Put them in the jar! Crazy motorists? Put em in the jar! Husbands with exceptionally loud breathing? In the jar! Devil telling you aren't good enough, smart enough, thin enough? JAR!

now back to my poopy pants draft.