I fell into Bird by Bird quite by chance. I picked it up because of the title and after reading Anne Lamott's reason for the title, had to have it. I read it at a perfect time in my life. I started writing several years ago after leaving my last, I hope, corporate position. I feel I have been in the vortex of a tornado for the past year with health and relationship issues crowding into each other and leaving me no room or time for peace. Rather than hide behind the sorrow, as was my past practice, I have embraced it by making new friends, joining Al Anon and starting to write an almost daily journal. Writing my way through a loved one's last illness and death from cancer this year brought many past emotions and experiences to the forefront of my consciousness. Re-experiencing those kinds of memories can be a frightening experience. Unless, of course, you are Anne Lamott.
Lamott shares ideas about how to get started writing, topics to cover and staying focused. She suggests writing down all your memories. She suggests starting with kindergarten. She tells the writer to tell the truth. This exercise brings to your consciousness people and experiences long forgotten. She discusses the writer's frame of mind. She encourages observation, attention to detail and use of intuition. She suggests specific topics as a way to learn to be observant about minute details. She recommends short assignments to keep the budding writer writing and minimize discouragement. She gives specific suggestions for each step of the writing process. She knows about "shitty first drafts". She shows how writing can be fun. And funny.
Use of outside resources is encouraged for accuracy about things for which the writer lacks first-hand experience. Ideas for remembering the writer's own great ideas or observations are given.
Lamott describes the agony of waiting to hear from a publisher following submission of book, draft or stories. She laments that people kind of want to write but really want to be published. She encourages a focus on writing itself rather than being published. She wants writers to write. She believes that writing has a great intrinsic value because it is intuitive and painful and healing.
Reading Bird by Bird confirmed my own state of mind. She shares her own life's experiences with humor. She teaches lessons about writing while thoroughly entertaining her reader. Lamott "gets it". I read part of her book while on a plane. I laughed out loud a number of times. I wanted to share, to tell my seat mates what Lamott had written. Her humor is often unanticipated. The sheer surprise of it adds to the impact.
While reading Bird by Bird, I underlined sentences that I liked or that spoke to me. I made stars by paragraphs. I wrote comments in the margin. I told friends about her self description of walking with her shoulders by her ears like Richard Nixon and her unusual but perfect description of embarrassment after reading her father's sexually explicit book. I continue to pull her off my shelf read excerpts that made me laugh or cheer with recognition.
Lamott and I share our loss of loved ones to cancer. I put her book down and sobbed after reading the doctor's words spoken before her friend died. Words that Lamott said changed her life. She said "Watch her carefully right now because she's teaching you how to live."
Lamott's book teaches not only about writing, but about living.
Copyright © Laurie
Crawford Stone, 2010.
All Rights Reserved.
Read our Interview with Laurie.
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