do i have to?

I haven't ever been a fan of the term creative juices. It sounds disgusting. Once, last year while washing the neglected dishes of the 8 girls I lived with (who wants to wash dishes when they've started growing facial hair?), my friend ashlee and i came up with the title of a concept album of an 80s butt rock band: Knee Deep In Pork Chop Water. Needless to say, circumstance had a definite influence on our repulsive choice. Ever since then, whenever anyone says "creative juices" all I can think of is pork chop water and the pungent leaning tower of mold stacked in our sink on that fateful day. The two phrases are married in my mind, or at least cousins, or perhaps married cousins--even worse.

Anyway, the point of all of these tangential meanderings (as promised) is to inform you that I have just rediscovered and purchased a book, that for lack of a better term, has gotten the creative juices flowing for me. The good kind. Not the kind that grows in your sink if you wait long enough. If you've lost interest and have commenced scrubbing the minutiae of your home, you're forgiven. If you're still here, the book is called Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott.

Sincerely, I want to quote the lovely contents in their entirety, but I will refrain. Dear ol' Anne has this to say about the oh so familiar aim for perfection in writing:

"I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.....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. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground--you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip. Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it's going to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move."

If you have even a remote interest in writing, reading or laughing, you should pick this up. What you probably shouldn't pick up: my roommates' cleaning habits or employing that awful term, creative jui.....(ewww)....(pleasedon'tmakemedeewwwwwww)...ces.