Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
Some Instructions on Writing and Life
[bq] “Good writing is about telling the truth.”
Share your stories faithfully, or at least as you remember them.
Exercise: Write down your memories, from as early as you remember until end of childhood. Will be amazed by the memories this uncovers.
Often need to write a lot of useless stuff to arrive at that one paragraph that should actually survive the edit. But that then can set you up for a productive run.
[bq] “Becoming a better writer is going to help you become a better reader, and that is the real payoff.”
The one key to better writing, just like playing an instrument, is consistent practice, even if (or especially when) it sucks.
Think in terms of short assignments. Imagine a 1 inch picture frame and only set yourself the task of writing about what you can see in it.
[q] “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
- E.L. Doctorow
[NFW: Same advice applies to live. Essentially the process mindset in action.]
Story: Author’s brother was freaking out one day before the deadline on a school report on birds for which he had 3 months but hadn’t done anything. Father puts arm around his shoulder and says “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
All good writers write shitty first drafts.
[NFW: Art of editing is under-appreciated. Especially in those 30 day writing challenges there is essentially no space for that.]
Need to write crap before hitting on gold. Sometimes it just takes 6 pages of nonsense before a good insight appears.
[bq] “Perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force.”
Writing a first draft is like watching a polaroid develop. You’re not supposed to know exactly what it’ll look like until it’s done.
Something completes you to start writing, but many other details, maybe the main idea, only appear later in the process.
A likable narrator is key for a good story.
Don’t impose a plot on your characters. Focus on characters, their feelings and relationships, and the plot will come naturally.
Good writing requires self-compassion. Easy to be compassionate when looking at cute child, but should feel the same way towards ourselves.
Be in awe of the world and get excited about it like a child would.
Need to reclaim our intuition, questioning things others might not want to talk about.
Need gentle concentration. Too much focus and you blow out the flames of inspiration.
Need to give up control to your inner voice, your intuition, not trying to guide it.
[bq] “If you’re lost in the forest, let the horse find the way home.”
[bq] “Listen to your broccoli” [p. 115]
Always write down good thoughts soon as possible. Terrible feeling to have a great line or deep insight and then have it slip away, just remembering that it was there, but not what it was. Also reading an old notebook or index card can suddenly transport us back to a very vivid memory we thought we had forgotten.
[NFW: Experienced this terrible feeling many times myself. Lying awake in bed, I couldn’t get rest until I got up and took a note of that line or particular way of explaining something that suddenly came to my mind. Same thing on walks (where actually a lot of the ideas came), I simply had to stop and take a note in my Evernote app.]
[bq] “Time is so full for people who are dying in a conscious way, full in the way that life is for children. They spend big round hours. So instead of staring miserably at the computer screen trying to will my way into having a breakthrough, I say to myself, ‘Okay, hmmm, let’s see. Dying tomorrow? What would I do today?’ “
[bq] “Your unconscious can’t work when you are breathing down its neck. You’ll sit there going, ‘Are you done in there yet, are you done in there yet, are you done in there yet?’ But it is trying to tell you nicely ‘Shut up and go away!’”
[bq] “The great writers keep writing about the cold dark place within the water under a frozen lake or the secluded, camouflaged hole. The light they shine on this hole, this pit, helps us cut away or step around the brush and brambles. […] It can no longer swallow us up.”
Look inside yourself, even those rooms within locked doors you were told to never go in, and find your own voice.
[bq] “It is only when I go ahead and decide to shoot my literary, creative wad on a daily basis that I get any sense of full presence, of being Zorba the Greek at the keyboard.”
Learning to write is about learning to give. Everything, always. Not saving things for later. If you’re liberal with giving your best, more good stuff will come plentiful.
[NFW: A lesson for writing but also a lesson for life in general. As Seth Godin points out in Linchpin, the true secret of great art, in any form that may take, is the giving of gifts. And those who give honestly and generously will usually be rewarded even more generously.]