Anne Lamott on Writing and Perfectionism

In her book Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott talks about how when we have a wound in our body, the body tends to cramp up.

She tells the story about chewing gum to help the muscles relax

She says our psychic muscles are like that.

They cramp around our wounds- the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both- to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So these woulds never have a chance to heal. (These are her words)

I just like the link to physical training and injury, which I’ve been thinking about a lot