Adair Lara - Naked, Drunk, and Writing: Shed Your Inhibitions and Craft a Compelling Memoir or Personal Essay

Praise for Adair Lara and Naked, Drunk, and Writing

When I took Adairs classes, which I did over and over again, her enthusiasm and understanding of the process of writing led me to make that quantum leap to being a published author. Nowat lastthe depth and breadth of her experience as writer and editor are distilled into this one great book on writing. Every writer should have a copy on their bookshelf.

Jacqueline Winspear, author of the Maisie Dobbs series

This is a really wonderful book. One of the best (and most helpful) books on writing Ive read. And unlike most practical guides, its never pedantic or boring.

Janis Cooke Newman, author of Mary

Naked, Drunk, and Writing is smart, funny, and very useful. A lot of the ideas in the book caused me to slap my metaphorical forehead and say, Why didnt I think of that? Alas, though, there are no naked writers in this book, except that were all naked under our clothes.

Jon Carroll, columnist, San Francisco Chronicle

The insights are terrific and so is the voice: funny and self-deprecating, ballsy and enthusiastic.

Tracy Johnston, author of Shooting the Boh

Naked, Drunk, and Writing is just terrific. So warm, frank, funny, generous. Its truly juicy with concrete details and anecdotes, yet methodical. The examples are exuberant and irrepressible.

Joan Frank, author of In Envy Country and The Great Far Away

I started reading Naked, Drunk, and Writing and kept reading and kept reading. Its full of good advice and techniques; I intend to steal from it outrageously.

Don Fry, national writing coach

[Adairs] books are wise, witty, and wonderful. This is an author who understands humanity. Reading Adair Lara is a pleasure, but not a guilty one, because we come away knowing not only about Adair, her friends, and family, but especially more about ourselves. This woman makes us think!

Elaine Petrocelli, owner of Book Passage

Half the people I know seem to have taken classes and workshops with San Franciscos legendary writer and teacher Adair Lara. She is very savvy and smart and hugely entertaining. I admire her greatly.

Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird

Other Books by Adair Lara

The Granny Diaries (Chronicle Books, 2008)
The Bigger the Sign, the Worse the Garage Sale (Chronicle Books, 2007)
You Know Youre A Writer When (Chronicle Books, 2007)
Oopsie! Ouchie! (Chronicle Books, 2004)
Normal Is Just a Setting on the Dryer (Chronicle Books, 2003)
Hanging Out the Wash (Red Wheel Weiser Books, 2002)
Hold Me Close, Let Me Go (Broadway Books, 2001)
The Best of Adair Lara (Scottwall Associates, 1999)
At Adairs House (Chronicle Books, 1995)
Welcome to Earth, Mom (Chronicle Books, 1992)

For my students, who have taught me so much about writing and about life. Thank you for trusting me, and one another, with your stories.

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Part II:

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Part III:

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Part IV:

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Part V:

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THAT WHICH IS MOST PERSONAL IS MOST COMMON

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU , WALDEN

B Y THE TIME I passed thirty, I got it: I was not going to be a writer. Sure, I had impressed my sixth-grade teacher with my heroic dog stories, but now I couldnt finish anything without balling it up in discouragement. So I did the next best thing and went after a job in a related field. I interviewed to be a copy editor at San Francisco Focus, the local city magazine, swearing to the managing editor that I wasnt a writer, that my happiness lay in making sure that the absence of h in Natan Katzmans name in the masthead was not an error.

I got the job. Pleased to my rope sandals to be hired at a real magazine, I proofread, fact-checked, and coded manuscripts for the typesetter. I sweated over the captions that came my way as if they were War and Peace, and wrote headlines such as Swell Wines at Swill Prices (which they rejected, the cowards). I called up writers to say things like, Listen to this paragraph and see if you can live without the last two sentences. I told myself it was terrific to be an editor, enjoying all those lunches out and wearing all those black outfits. All the time, though, I yearned to be one of the writers who came and went at odd hours, looking as if they had tramp streamers moored outside, or who had just left wintry palaces, and gave us their copy to edit.

My friend Cynthia, the production editor, wanted to be a writer as much as I did. She was as thin as a butter knife and wore her sweaters down to her knees. Sometimes after work, hungover from a long day of polishing other peoples sentences, wed go to the bar to drink expensive red wine that we couldnt afford and sorrow over our lot, destined as we were to slave over the scribblings of hacks while we ourselves went unpublished and unrecognized.

It was at one of these visits to the bar that we hatched an idea: We would start a writing club. The plan was simple: Wed write 500 words every weekday and give them to the other person. Wed mark the parts we liked in the others pieces with a yellow highlighter before returning them. I had gotten the idea from a teacher at windy San Francisco State years before. On everybodys homework, he marked passages that caught his eye with a yellow highlighter. When the papers were turned back, everybody in the class had somethingat least a paragraph or twoto feel proud of.

Cynthia was game. We scribbled a list of topics on a bar napkin: parking, rain, first dates, and father. And we were off. We handed our 500 worders to each other over the cubicle walls at work, fished them out of our purses at staff meetings, and brought them with us in our gym bags to our Friday night Rhythm & Motion class in the Haight.

It didnt matter what the 500 words werewe could copy them from the yellow pages or the back of the Cheerios box if we wanted to. Id rarely shown my work to people before, outside of school, because you only showed people stuff you thought was good. Now I gave Cynthia any old dashed-off thingnot because it was good, but because it was due. When Cynthia gave my pages back, Id read the sentences shed highlighted, swooning with admiration for my own brilliance. Even if there was only one sentence bathed in yellow, suddenly my head was too big to fit through doorways.