Bourdain on writing with no time to think

Like a lot of you, I’m guessing, I binged on Anthony Bourdain over the weekend after hearing of his suicide on Friday. I Netflixed a few episodes of his show “Parts Unknown” and read a bunch of tributes. Two of the tributes stood out to me – one from my friend Kathi Purvis on the Bourdain she met and corresponded with, and Spencer Hall on why it meant something for Bourdain to visit, and love, the Waffle House.

I also went back and read the New Yorker piece that catapulted him out of the kitchen and into the world of books and TV. It was better than I remembered. I tried to read one of his books a few years ago – “A Cook’s Tour,” I think – but there was a dismissive edge to it that turned me off. From all accounts, including his own, Bourdain became kinder and more earnest as he got older. His blade could still cut, but he didn’t wave it around the way he did as a younger man.

In the middle of all that weekend reading, I came across an interview he did on NPR a couple years ago. Toward the end, he talks about writing “Kitchen Confidential,” the book that came out of that New Yorker piece. As he talked about it, he said something about writing that rang true:

One of the hardest things about writing is just letting yourself go – not worrying about if the work will sell, or if readers are going to love it, or even if it’s any good. It actually helps sometimes to have a day job, or a baby in the next room, or something else to prod you into putting words on the page. (I own this T-shirt as a reminder.)

I actually do have a day job now, where writing is part of the gig but not all of it, and so I’m having to make time to write other stuff. That’s why I got up at 6 this morning to write this, and gave myself an hour to wrap it up and get it out into the world. Write like you have to be somewhere else soon. Write like no one else is ever going to read it. That’s solid advice. Anthony Bourdain had so much to teach us.

— TT