Authors on the Web - BIRD BY BIRD, WORD BY WORD

BIRD BY BIRD: Some Instructions on
Writing and Life
Anne Lamott
Anchor
Reference
ISBN: 0385480016

Since first being published in 1995, Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life continues to be the definitive how-to/why-to guide for new writers. A hilarious and helpful manual that covers every step of the writing process --- from gluing yourself to the desk chair to facing the fact that getting published will probably not make you happier, richer or more attractive --- the reading of Bird By Bird has become something of a rite of passage for hopeful writers… sort of like the day you impetuously quit your job and decided to make a go of this writing thing.

Best described as a transcribed version of the lectures Lamott delivers to her writing classes, Bird By Bird begins the way all writing classes do: with the exhortation of all those who are actually serious about honing their craft (as opposed to those precocious souls who ask about finding on agent at the first class) to "sit down… put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or turn on your computer and bring up the file, and then stare at it for an hour or so." From the daunting and ego-deflating "Getting Started" period, Lamott moves on to the absolute necessity of thinking of your work not as a fully conceived, glacier-sized whole, but as a series of short assignments.

As promised in the subtitle, Lamott plumbs the depths of both the formal elements of writing (she devotes sections to plot, character development, dialogue, setting, point of view, etc.) and the less tangible but infinitely more deleterious obstacles facing a writer --- embracing the "shitty first draft" and slaying the perfectionist dragon standing between you and your shitty first draft; overcoming writer's block and crises of faith; finding a stalwart soul to read your shitty draft and not being crushed to bits when she has more than a few suggestions; and learning to deal with professional jealousy, an inescapable fate "because some wonderful, dazzling successes are going to happen for some of the most awful, angry, undeserving writers you know --- people who are, in other words, not you."

The thing is, Bird By Bird isn't all that revolutionary a book. There exists a spate of literature out there dispensing pearls of wisdom on the writing life, some of it coming from such notable authors as Annie Dillard, John Gardner and Natalie Goldberg. Yet, ask anyone in the position to make a comparison and more likely than not they'll say Bird By Bird surpasses all. What, then, is it about Bird By Bird that strikes a chord with so many readers and writers?

Lamott's advice --- all culled from personal experience --- is thoughtful and keen and so patiently explained it's easily employable. But, ultimately, it's her uncanny and self-effacing humor, natural, unaffected tone and anecdote-as-life-lesson adeptness that makes Bird By Bird such an effective teaching device. Hers is a refreshingly conversational, approachable, enjoyable didacticsm that leaves you with the feeling that 1) if you were to meet Lamott, you're pretty sure you would be instantaneous best friends 2) however far you descend into the pits of frustration, self-loathing and despair, the writing life is worth it. Or, as Lamott so perfectly puts it, "Even if you only show the people in your writing group your memoirs or stories or novels, even if you only wrote your story so that one day your children would know what life was like when you were a child and you knew the name of every dog in town --- still, to have written your version is an honorable thing."

Is there a book that inspired you to write, or keep writing? Tell us about it. Write Sarah@bookreporter.com.

--- Sarah Brennan

THE WRITING LIFE
by Annie Dillard

ON WRITING: A Memoir of the Craft
by Stephen King

ON WRITERS AND WRITING
by John Gardner,
Stewart O'Nan (Editor)

WRITING DOWN THE BONES: Freeing the Writer Within
by Natalie Goldberg

BECOMING A WRITER
by Dorothea Brande, John Gardner