‘Dusk Night Dawn: on revival and courage’ by Anne Lamott

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

This is Lamott’s latest book and loved it like I have all of her other ones, even though her books are pretty low key and more rambling than polished. That’s actually what I like. She is funny, generous, self-deprecating, and so brutally honest. When I read her books I feel “seen.” She seems like a good friend who I can share my darkest thoughts with. Someone who won’t try to fix me, or shame me, or run very quickly in the other direction.

Lamott shares her messes in a way that make you want to pick yourself up out of your own mess, but without grand goals or strategy. Just try a little everyday. Don’t be too hard on yourself, keep going, you’re doing great, even though you know how dreadful and scary everything is.

With thoughts of revival and courage stumbling around in my brain, I’m planning to reread her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I hope it will motivate me to return to a writing project that I’ve begun but has been languishing.

I keep putting it off and it keeps glaring at me. I want to see if I can make it wink at me instead. The pandemic was a fantastic excuse for delay (which makes no sense because sitting behind a computer for days on end would have been hugely possible). I just didn’t have the headspace for it.

Now, I am fully aware that writers regularly read books about the writing process when they are procrastinating with their own writing. Oops. Guilty as charged. However, onwards anyway with revival and courage (but also with fear and doubt nipping at my heels). There will be good days and bad days. Thanks for the perspective Anne!

Author Feature

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”

Anne Lamott