Anne Lamott is one of my favorite writers on writing, thinking and Being. Oh yes, much more fun than Heidegger. Last night, I turned to her book Bird by Bird for insight into the moral reality of the book I’m writing. Here are a few snippets from page 108 of her book:

So a moral position is not a message. A moral position is a passionate caring inside you. We are all in danger now and have a new everything to face, and there is not point gathering an audience and demanding its attention unless you have something to say that is constructive and important. … So write about the things that are most important to you. Love and death and sex and survival are important to most of us. Some of us are also interested in God and ecology.

Maybe what you care most passionately about are fasting and high colonics …. That is fine, but we do not want you to write about them; we will secretly believe that you are simply spiritualizing your hysteria. There are millions of people already doing this at churches and New Age festivals across the land.

The brilliance goes on. No kidding; I’d love to quote the rest of the chapter, but I think I’ve gotten enough fair use out of it, and I’d rather you bought the book. Writers gotta eat.