{"id":9198,"date":"2021-11-08T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9198"},"modified":"2021-11-07T22:18:28","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T03:18:28","slug":"bird-by-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/08\/bird-by-bird\/","title":{"rendered":"Bird by Bird."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I asked readers for suggestions for books about writing<\/a>, the second-most cited book, after Stephen King\u2019s On Writing<\/em>, was Anne Lamott\u2019s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life<\/em><\/a>. It\u2019s a wonderful, slim book of short but very potent essays on just about everything related to writing, with an emphasis on fiction (and, at that, I\u2019d say the short form), but much of it is also applicable to other forms of writing or merely the act of writing itself. It inspired me, and I say that as someone who is infrequently inspired at this point, even when it comes to writing about things I enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is filled with advice, and I don\u2019t want to reproduce much of it here, because you should go read the book itself, and also because the advice just sounds much better in Lamott\u2019s voice, with her wry humor and copious examples. She draws extensively on her experience teaching writing classes as well as writing for herself, allowing her to speak about things like writer\u2019s block, creating credible characters, publishing, not<\/em> publishing, and more in both her own voice and those of her students. I found nearly all of this advice to either ring true to my own experiences – especially that on writer\u2019s block, something I haven\u2019t truly experienced, because I can always just write something else and get things moving again – or to answer questions I\u2019ve always had, such as how to do things like create those credible characters or write dialogue that sounds true, both to how people talk (which isn\u2019t as easy as it sounds) and to the characters speaking it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s plenty in here on getting started, which is something I often hear from aspiring writers is a huge part of the problem – they want to write, but can\u2019t figure out how to begin. (With the first word, of course.) Lamott has sage advice on reasons to write, and reasons not to do so – not if you think it\u2019s a quick route to wealth, or financial freedom, or popularity; if you doubt her, she has plenty of failure stories from her own career, from books rejected by publishers to dealing with self-doubt and the voices in her head that love to tell her she\u2019s not any good at writing. (She is, though. Very.) It\u2019s always helpful to know that other writers, especially those who have had more success than I have or have had longer careers, deal with the same kind of doubts and impostor syndrome that I do, and to be reminded that writing is its own end. Writing should give you joy, to use the popular bromide of the day. If it doesn\u2019t, don\u2019t do it. If it does, then how much you make from it – if you make anything at all, if you even publish – doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n <\/script> \n \n\n\n\n

Lamott is an irreverent writer who is perhaps best known for some of her writing on faith, including the best-selling Traveling Mercies<\/a><\/em>, and while her beliefs do show up in the pages here, I thought it was always in service of her larger points, without proselytizing or excluding; on the contrary, she goes out of her way to include people of all faiths and no faiths in the book. I can\u2019t say I was concerned – I try to read as diverse a set of authors as possible – but I include this for anyone who might have felt disinclined to read for Bird by Bird<\/em> for this reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title of Bird by Bird <\/em>comes from a wonderful anecdote within an early essay that, in short, is the writing equivalent of taking it one day at a time. One of the biggest obstacles I have always faced as a writer, regardless of my subject, has been the discouragement I feel when I think about the whole project – its size, yes, but my ability to complete it, and make it good, and in a timely fashion, and not to be distracted by that thing I\u2019ve been meaning to bake or that game I\u2019ve wanted to play. So much of Bird by Bird<\/em> comprises gentle reminders that you can do this, and it\u2019s okay to fail, or think you\u2019re going to fail. Just keep going, bird by bird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also read another of your recommendations, Verlyn Klinkenborg\u2019s Several Short Sentences About Writing<\/a><\/em>. It\u2019s a twee book with advice written to look like verse, in a voice that would make me think violent thoughts about any teacher who lectured in it. There\u2019s some useful advice buried within it, but I encountered at least as much advice that I would say I violate every time I start to write, and while it\u2019s written by a journalist largely for journalists, I\u2019m not sure how much of the counsel here I\u2019d truly endorse. I did enjoy the last 50 pages, with examples of bad writing from students he\u2019s taught over the years, which ranges from the execrable to the unintentionally hilarious. It\u2019s more than a matter of laughing at bad writing, but many of the examples illuminate problems with the language itself, ways in which English, or a lack of command of it, can lead us astray. There\u2019s value in that. Perhaps he should have made three-fourths of the book out of that, and limited his advice to the remainder – without the pompous formatting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I asked readers for suggestions for books about writing, the second-most cited book, after Stephen King\u2019s On Writing, was Anne Lamott\u2019s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. It\u2019s a wonderful, slim book of short but very potent essays on just about everything related to writing, with an emphasis on fiction (and, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[161,225,900,316],"class_list":["post-9198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-highly-recommended","tag-non-fiction","tag-self-help-books","tag-writing","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9199,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9198\/revisions\/9199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}