Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird Is a True Gift for Every Writer
Thank you so much, Anne.
I was so captivated when I finished “Bird by Bird”, by Anne Lamott, that I must have spent a whole minute without blinking. Anne has so much to teach. So much. With musical prose, she tells us stories, she makes us laugh, she shows us the truth.
The truth? About what? Birds? No, about writing.
“The truth doesn’t come out in bumper stickers”, she wrote. She needed a whole book. She needed to get deep, and I’m so glad she did it.
I don’t know about you, but when someone like Anne Lamott says “Here is almost every single thing I know about writing”, I think it’s a smart move to take a seat. And listen, and grab a pen, and take notes.
Here are mine.
Go one step at a time and feel free to make a mess, because nobody is gonna see it
Short assignments and shitty first drafts: you go word by word, paragraph by paragraph. You go bird by bird. You permit yourself to “get it all down on paper, because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would never have gotten to by more rational, grown-up means”.
Writer’s block?
“The word block suggests that you are constipated or stuck, when the truth is that you’re empty.” — Anne
Ouch. Truth hurts sometimes, doesn’t it?
When empty, we need to refill our internal reservoir, not open its valve. How do we refill? We go out and live. We go out and stay alert, observing. We go out and collect grist for the mill.
Finding the grist for the mill
Good news: there is grist everywhere. Yay!
Yeah, but we have to pay attention.
An impatient client at the drive-thru? Grist for the mill. A talk between two strangers in the doctor’s waiting room? Grist for the mill. A great book by Anne Lamott? Grist also (of finest quality in this case), and so on.
Don’t let the grist slip through your fingers. Take notes.
Anne mentions index cards, but you can use whatever works for you. The idea is to capture ideas — the grist — as soon as they pop up and, more importantly, before they vanish — because they love to do this, and all you’ll remember is that you forgot a great idea.
I have shortcuts on my phone for taking a quick note or recording a quick audio and sending it to Evernote, and I use them all the time. Of course, if I don’t have my phone with me, good old pen and paper will do.
Your unconscious is the miller — let him do his job
Grist collected, it’s time to let the miller — your unconscious — do its work. But-
“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?’ But it is trying to tell you nicely, ‘Shut up and go away’.” — Anne
So, go away. Let the miller alone. He will let you know once he finishes his job.
Now, you may be questioning, what does this internal mill produce again?
Well, it produces the truth.
A perfect example is when Anne talks about school lunches. She takes a mundane experience and extracts a nugget of truth from it. In her own words, “It only looked like a bunch of kids eating lunch. It was really about opening our insides in front of everyone. Just like writing is. It was a precursor of the shower in seventh — and eighth-grade gym”.
Yes, in a sort of alchemy, writers transform rock into gold.
Learn to get out of the way
“The good news is that some days it feels like you just have to keep getting out of your own way so that whatever it is that wants to be written can use you to write it”. — Anne
Thanks, Universe, for having used Anne as a medium to get this insight on paper. What a tremendous shift in perception this was for me. And you know what? I think this article wanted to be written too — and wanted it badly.
Giving and receiving feedback
I loved when she wrote that you don’t need always to cut with the sword of truth, but instead point with it. So, when giving feedback, be honest but don’t be abusive. And, if someone is shredding your work into pieces with the sword of truth, beware. You deserve better.
That said, we need someone to read our drafts and give us honest feedback. We may not like what we hear at first, but in the end, we’ll be glad we did it. Thanks, dear wife!
Publication
Still in the introduction, Anne tells us “that publication is not all that is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.”
Publication, according to Anne, is gonna drive you crazy if you are in the game for fame and fortune, but she acknowledges that being a published writer does bring a quiet joy. Well, I’ve never published a book, but I guess she’s right. In short, if you’re not enough before publication, you won’t be enough after it.
Why write, after all?
I was asking this question myself these days. What’s the point, right? I know, with only 75 articles on Medium, I’m still in the writer’s kindergarten, but still, I was questioning myself. If you can relate, Anne might help.
So, why write?
Because becoming a writer is about learning to be present, to be alive. There is no way we can collect grist for the mill if we’re sleepwalking through life.
Because writing is about telling the truth as we understand it. Humans crave truth like puppies crave new sandals to chew. We can’t help it. We need the truth to understand reality, to make sense of the world. We need writers “not to look around and say, ‘Look at yourselves, you idiots!,’ but to say, ‘This is who we are’”.
Because writing is about caring for others, reaching out to the world, and contributing.
And, finally, because:
“When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.” — Anne
And what a beautiful song “Bird by Bird” is.
