A Weekend of First Drafts

I hope parenting is like writing.

It feels like it is. I started Anne Lamott's book on writing, Bird by Bird, this weekend. After the first couple of chapters, a couple of clear messages about writing stand out. In it is a Vonnegut quote: "When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth." Yep, that sounds like parenting.

More specifically to the point, though, is Lamott making it clear that you've got to write a ton, write every day, write when you don't feel like it, and write about stuff you never think will lead you to anywhere. And most of it might not. But a small percentage will be gold, or at least the beginning of something that glitters and leads you to where you never thought about going but you discovered was treasure-filled all along. "You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcedence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen," writes Lamott. "It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started."

I hope parenting works like this. Just keep doing it and hope that a small percentage of what you're doing will be good, that without planning on it or seeing it coming, you got exactly what you were aiming for, despite pages and pages of ridiculous and silly failed writing attempts.

I hope that by going back out there every day to parent, even after every "first draft" for the past 2 weeks has been complete and utter garbage and I can't imagine ever getting it right again, there might be some solid writing in there somewhere. Like Friday afternoon. We just went on a walk. It was accidental, routine, just another warmup writing exercise in this extended metaphor. But it was good. We left with energy and gusto. Running and banter and sunshine. I seamlessly calmed one child down after she fell and drew blood (and dutifully placed a band-aid on the now pride-producing war wound), I got them to daintily dodge all the mud puddles but did allow them to enjoy the dog dancing in the ones he encountered. We held hands and they told stories and I talked to them about Jesus. If they read any of the books of their childhood, I hope it's one with walks like these.

But for every time I get it right, every time the writing comes easily and the figurative language dances effortlessly on the page, there are ten times I get it wrong. One child flashed the entire soccer field, much the same way she's flashed the entire church. Fights and battles and lying and endless piles of just stuff, everywhere, oh the stuff, the stuff that I repeatedly tell them to put away and swear that I won't let be the source of one more fight, one more fit, that stuff gets tripped on or stepped on or kicked or broken, and the writing is terrible.

And the bad writing goes for page after page after page, and I'll feel like I'll never get it right again. And Lamott says about that, "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. . . Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived." And if parenting is like writing, then I'm given some grace to drop the perfectionism bit and just try. Just write. Write anything, with good intentions and with passion.

"Now, who knows if any of this is usable material? There's no way to tell until you've got it all down, and then there might just be one sentence or one character or one theme that you end up using. But you get it all down. You just write."

And in that writing, you get one daughter who walks the length of the entire lawn, row by meticulous row, pushing her bubble mower next to her father's precision-cut Yardman lawn eater, just to "help out" like she did shoveling compost all afternoon. Or you get the other daughter who has decided that writing and journaling with me should be a big part of our summer plans. Or the two of them in my lap, giggling like crazy while reading Shel Silverstein poetry together, but only after the Bible-reading because they've reminded me that we need to read that first, always first, so we don't run out of time.

If parenting is like writing, then I hope they never go back and read all of the drafts I've had to discard. I hope they leave those pages out, all the awkward prose and meddling metaphors and cluttered paragraphs that I pieced together in search of perfection. And I hope there's enough of the good that they can piece it together and find a book. Or perhaps a solid chapter. A chapter where they can see into the heart of the author.

I hope you were able to follow this little comparison tonight as I cobbled my way to meaning. If not, don't worry. It's just one of many drafts I intend to write.