“How do I write sober?” was the big question that sobriety raised. I told the alcoholics who were helping me, “If it comes down to a choice between my creativity and my sobriety, I don’t know that I will choose sobriety.”

“There is no choice,” they promptly answered me. “Keep on drinking and there will be no more creativity.”

I knew that they were right. I had to find a way to work that would not require alcohol or drugs. If I were honest with myself, my methods had not really been working for some time.

“Stop trying to be a great writer,” they advised me next. “That’s your ego. Get your ego out of your writing. You should be writing from a spirit of service. You are just the vehicle, the channel. Let God write through you.”

“What if he doesn’t want to?”

“Just try it and see.” I was not at all sure that God would want to write through me. And wasn’t it only normal to want to be a great writer?

“In order to write sober, you have to let God take care of the quality,” my mentors sternly told me. “Your job is to take care of the quantity.”

It was suggested that I post a sign in my writing area, “Okay, God, you take care of the quality. I will take care of the quantity.” Then it was suggested that I set a manageable quota of daily work: three pages.

If it took all day to write three pages, I was to remain at my desk working until my quota was complete. More likely, the three pages would get accomplished quickly. When they were finished, I was done for the day. I was not to write more than three pages.

The idea that writing could be something that didn’t require my whole day was a revelation to me—and a threat. My identity was bound up with being a writer. If writing was just one of the things I did, who was I, then? I was used to the self-importance of being a writer. I had bought into the notion that artists were tormented and that their every waking thought needed to be given to their art. My new friends were suggesting that such a stance was really just an ego trip. God was the Great Creator, they pointed out. I was, after all, one of God’s creations myself.

I posted the little sign. I settled Domenica in her playpen and I started to write. My head started in: “This isn’t any good. This is terrible. You can do better. Start again.” I was used to such self-loathing diatribes while I wrote. I was used to writing and rewriting, striving for perfection. Then I remembered, “I am not supposed to be judging. I am just supposed to be writing.” Quality was up to God. I was in charge only of quantity.

Now when my head started in with its vitriol, I had an answer for it. “Good, bad, or indifferent—it’s not mine to judge.”

Imagine my surprise when my writing began to respond to this new and far more charitable agenda. Now that I was no longer judging and condemning my sentences, my prose seemed to relax a little and to straighten out. If God were indeed writing through me, God had an easier and more accessible prose style than I did. Less self-consciously clever and ego-driven, my new prose was more likable. I even liked it myself.

“There is such a thing as a rough draft,” my writing mentors advised me. “Try to simply get things on the page. They can be fixed later—if they need to be fixed, that is.”