Marin couple creates guide to ‘Good Writing’

After getting married in their 60s, writers Neal Allen and Anne Lamott recently faced the ultimate test of their relationship: writing a book together. “Good Writing” is the first collaborative effort between Allen, a former journalist and marketing executive who walked away from his career to become a writer, and Lamott, a longtime novelist with a sideline as a writing-advice sage.

“It’s a lot about writing and a lot about love in later life, and about how two writers coexist in harmony — most of the time,” Lamott said.

“Good Writing,” which the Marin couple will discuss at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco on March 17, doubles as a resource for aspiring writers and a record of the couple’s good-hearted squabbling. The book includes more than 30 “rules” for writers devised by Allen, followed by commentary from Lamott, whose own perspective often directly contradicts her husband’s. The implication is that they’re less rules than guidelines.

“I write much quirkier, and I write a lot more playfully than Neal does,” Lamott said. “Neal was a journalist for 10 years and writes in a somewhat more straightforward and educated way. And then I’m sort of the classroom mother, and I’m encouraging everybody to keep writing and not give up.”

The two met in 2016 on the over-50 matchmaking site OurTime — despite Lamott having unknowingly rejected Allen earlier on the same site.

They found they had a lot in common. Both were writers, and both embraced religious awakenings as adults; Allen embraced Neo-Buddhist philosophy in his 50s and has since become a spiritual coach, while Lamott became a churchgoing Christian in her early 30s and has made her faith a major theme in her writing. The two tied the knot in 2019 at an idyllic ceremony at Deer Park Villa in Fairfax, the town where they now reside.

Allen wrote two books before teaming up with Lamott: “Shapes of Truth: Discover God Inside You,” a spiritual guide, and “Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic,” on writing.

Lamott has written more than a dozen books, including “Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year,” which made the New York Times bestseller list in 1993, and “Bird by Bird,” a 1994 guide that established her as a sage of writing advice.

“My readers are really used to certain landmarks in my life, like when I got on the New York Times bestseller list, when I had a baby,” Lamott said. “This book and this relationship and our way of writing it are another landmark. It’s our first collaborative effort, and it’s really a great chance for people to decide whether or not they think I made a good decision in marrying Neal.”

If the two can agree on something, it’s typically sound advice. “Myriad,” the Latinate word that replaces “many” in the hands of so many writers, gets a well-deserved thrashing; both agree in general that writers should prioritize terse Anglo-Saxon words rather than fancy loanwords.

“The example we use in the book is Annie coming to me saying, ‘I need the word for the thing at the end of a shoelace,’” Allen said. “I said, ‘Oh, that’s an aglet.’ And Annie said, ‘Oh dear, I’ll just use ‘tip’ — no one knows what an aglet is.’”

Allen and Lamott are far from the first writers to posit a list of rules for their peers, but “Good Writing” stands out both through the sheer number of rules and the mutability implied by the two writers’ disagreements.

“Elmore Leonard has his 10, and William Faulkner has his four,” Allen said. “And I thought, no, there’s a lot more than that. So far I’ve collected over 30 of them.”

An essential part of “Good Writing” is its note of encouragement to writers who might feel stuck in a Sisyphean pursuit, to use a word the couple might not necessarily encourage.

“The Tao Te Ching says most failure happens on the verge of success,” Allen said. “It’s a hard grind to make a living as a writer. That’s always going to be true. And not giving up is a psychological game much more than it is a money game.”

“The best thing someone could say about the book is that it might function as a benevolent kick in the butt to get you writing,” Lamott said. “In this book, we say, just write, just write, just write, just write.”

They will discuss “Good Writing” at 7 p.m. March 17 at the Curran Theatre at 445 Geary St. in San Francisco. Admission is $34.99 to $105.30. Go to us.atgtickets.com.