Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Thoughts & Rating: 9/10
Bird by Bird is a wonderful book for writers. That includes aspiring writers and—I imagine—professionals. I could be valuable for others in creative professions as well. I say this because the arrogant little shit I was during my early corporate days probably would’ve scoffed at Lamott’s raw honesty.
This book is great because it gave me what I needed. Every page was a dose of self-confirmation bias as I screamed “Yes, that’s it! That makes sense! Oh thank God she said that!”
Bird by Bird felt like a warm blanket at the end of a rainy marathon. It was similar to when I first read Phil Fisher’s Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and I knew fundamental equity investing was something I would dedicate a chunk of my life to.
The book didn’t make me want to be a writer. It made me feel okay for wanting to be a writer. It became another friend I needed to say, “Oh no, you aren’t crazy. It’s all normal.”
In hindsight, a core lesson from writing that is the same with investing, powerlifting (i.e. the shit I like to do), and anything else people might find worth doing is to start small.
Take it one inch picture frame at a time. Focus on the small things. Don’t focus on getting published or anything big. No grandiose vision or goal. Just focus on sitting down at your desk at the same time every day and get to work. Afterwards, go for a walk. Fill up on the world around you.
Book Notes:
“..the idea of spending entire days in someone else’s office doing someone else’s work did not suit my father’s soul.”
The case for writing as the perfect form of exploration for me:
“One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore…..writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.”
A consolation I find with this book is how Lamott repeatedly explains how hard she finds writing. It’s not something that gets easier. Bourdain said he found writing easy and to that there are bands of experience with what is easy and difficult and the word difficult could mean many things as well. Either way, I find Lamott’s confessions reassuring. It’s like being given permission to stop hating myself for finding writing hard.
Sticking out.
“This is a difficult country to look too different in—the United States of Advertising, as Paul Krassner puts it—and if you are too skinny or too tall or dark or weird or short or frizzy or homely or poor or nearsighted, you get crucified. I did.”
Lamott’s description of her father, the writer, was so relatable to my early upbringing:
“..a child who thought differently than his peers, who may have had serious conversations with grown-ups, who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think that this sort fo person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal.”
For writing, and most things in life:
"'Do it every day for a while,' my father kept saying. ‘Do it as you would do scales on the piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honour. And make a commitment to finishing things.’”
Being a writer means being patient and having hope.
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will once. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”
It’s about writing. Not getting published. Like most goals, they’re hollow upon achievement and end quickly.
Don’t start big projects in December or Mondays or both. Lamott considers Mondays to be poor writing days. It’s humorous advice. But there is the inherent idea of setting yourself up for success and doing whatever you can to get yourself in a good place mentally because nothing around the external world will be supportive or conducive to a writing career. Not that you won’t have encouragement from friends but the short-term oriented world that prioritizes prestige, certainty and paycheques won’t be helpful for a writer to be around.
Lamott stopped being a starving artist after her fourth book was published. It’s not a journey for the faint of heart. If you don’t do it for the love of the work, you’ll have nothing.
“…good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are.”
Practice telling the truth by writing about your childhood:
“Flannery O’Connor said that anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life.”
“Remember that you own what happened to you.”
Writing is no different from training. You sit down at the same time every day to train your creativity to the rhythm. You sit and will yourself to write goddamnit.
The process:
“…you don’t care about those first three pages; those you will throw out, those you needed to write to get to the fourth page, to get to that one long paragraph that was what you had in mind when you started, only you didn’t know that, couldn’t know that, until you got to it. And the story begins to materialize, and another thing is happening, which is that you are learning what you aren’t writing, and this is helping you to find out what you are writing.”
“All I know is that if I sit there long enough, something will happen.”
Persistence + working to be a better writer are the key.
“…if you are really good, and very persistent, someone eventually will read your material and take you on. I can almost promise you this….becoming a better writer is going to help you become a better reader, and that is the real payoff.”
Write.
“The problem that comes up over and over again is that these people want to be published. They kind of want to write, but they really want to be published. You’ll never get to where you want to be that way, I tell them. There is a door we all want to walk through, and writing can help you find it and open it. Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up. But publishing won’t do any of those things; you’ll never get in that way.”
Focus on practicing every day. Make small improvements every day. Don’t worry about some big goal. Remember the small things.
“Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy.”
The feeling that you want to do something for the rest of your life.
“…it is fantasy to think that successful writers do not have these bored, defeated hours, these hours of deep insecurity when one feels as small and jumpy as a water bug. They do. But they also often feel a great sense of amazement that they get to write, and they know that this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives.”
Books
“Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave.”
Start small. Imagine a one inch picture frame and focus on writing only what you can see through there. Pick out the details and the little nuances. Pull out the small things in that small image.
Writing a novel doesn’t mean knowing where it will go or how it will end. You just have to be able to see a few feet ahead of you. That’s the same with life. Think about that. A novel is a story of a character’s life. Your own life will be like that too. You can only see a a few feet ahead and you are making it up as you go.
“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
Go after a one inch piece of story. One small scene, one character and one exchange. It’s okay to do this after stressing bout money, what your friends are doing, what people might think of you etc. as long as you sit down and get to work to write that small bit.
What writing fulfills:
“Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong.”
“Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.”
The thing that doesn’t feel like a choice. It’s normal to feel this way.
“One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely,’It’s not like you don’t have a choice, because you do–you can either type or kill yourself.’ We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid. The right words and sentences just do not come pouring out like ticker tape most of the time.”
Terrible first efforts
“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper.”
Embrace the mess. Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Making messes help us find out who we are and what we should be writing.
“Vonnegut said, ‘When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth.’ So go ahead and make big scrawls and mistakes. Use up lots of paper. Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artists’s true friend.”
What’s important is to write everything down because you don’t know what might be valuable.
All your characters, good and bad, are a facet of yourself. You will need to let bad things happen to the characters you love because that’s what life is. Actions have consequences and we aren’t perfect.
Questions to ask about characters:
What first impression do they make?
What do they smell like?
What are their secrets?
What do they desire most in the world?
How do they feel, think, talk and survive?
What would their journal say?
What helps them make sense of life?
What do they long for?
What does the character do and say? (Forget your descriptions of them, let the actions of the characters tell the reader who they are)
Novels should have hope. It’s how we decide to face death.
It’ll take weeks and months of writing before you have a sense of who your characters are. You won’t even know who the main characters will be until later. It’s like that in the real world too. Sometimes it’s random strangers form years back who were the most influential.
Plot grows out of the characters. Follow them and write their interaction. Worry about the characters, not plot. Plot is “What people will up and do in spite of everything that tells them they shouldn’t."
Keep on asking: “Now what happens?"
We read stories to find out what happens to people from their point of view. It’s another lens at a life and life has no plans. So you can’t plan out plot.
A writer needs to observe and listen to his characters. The plot will come from there. Just remember to keep the characters moving forward.
“…whatever happens, we need to feel that it was inevitable, that even though we may be amazed, it feels absolutely right, that of course things would come to this, of course they would shake down in this way. In order to have this sense of inevitability, the climax of your story will probably only reveal itself to you slowly and over time.”
On writing dialogue:
Practice reading them out loud or mouthing them
Listen to how people really talk
It’s not reproducing a speech. It’s putting down your sense of how your character speaks
Each character has their own self. They can’t all sound like you
Try putting two characters who dislike each other together. See how the dialogue transpires when they are stuck in an elevator
Good dialogue gives a sense of eavesdropping.
“You need to trust that you’ve got it in you to listen to people, watch them, and notice what they wear and how they move, to capture a sense of how they speak.”
Learn about people from people. Not reading about them. Use reading to confirm what you observe outside.
Your characters coat, ring, the way he speaks to a colleague, responds to a phone call, who he considers friends will all tell who he is. Sometimes, this character might condense three years of his life to two sentences and that’s just who he is. You, as the writer, have to deal with that.
Write shitty first drafts. Read them all and keep the parts that sound true. Kill the rest.
A writer is a good typist who listens. Most of the development happens in the subconscious. You have to learn to listen to it.
There will be times when you are editing and writing where the story feels stuck. Take some time away from the book. That’s why Stephen King says to start another book immediately after writing the draft of one. Give you and the book some space. Come back to it when the confidence for it is restored—if you felt that was the problem. Nothing is supposed to go to plan. Remember, you make plans and God laughs.
A writer needs to be able to see people clearly. To do that, you need to have a sense of who you are really are. Without that sense, you can’t hope to recognize others.
Self-compassion and introspection appear to be the prerequisite to write about others. How could you be able to see past a person’s labels and realize he is going through the same set of problems and sufferings as you?
“I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?”
“Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world.”
Think about looking at the world from the point of view of a child. Children are always in awe at everything. They are so present. Practice that.
Seeing and observing take deliberate practice. It’s how you focus on the details and get obsessed over the need to understand others.
“To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass—seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one.”
A thought for not just writing but anything that takes time and effort:
“If you find that you start a number of stories or pieces that you don’t ever bother finishing, that you lose interest or faith in them along the way, it may be that there is nothing at their centre about which you care passionately. You need to put yourself at their centre, you and what you believe to be true or right. The core, ethical concepts in which you most passionately believe are the language in which you are writing.”
Purpose of writing:
“…the purpose of most great writing seems to be to reveal in an ethical light who we are.”
You must believe in what you are saying. That’s what will keep your writing going. There is no point in saying what you don’t believe. The belief is what will get you through the inevitable struggle.
“My true religion is kindness.” - 14th Dalai Lama
Write about things that are important to you. No point wasting an audience’s time if you earned. Love, death, survival and sex are important for most of us so you can write about that if you wish.
Learn to stick it out. Even if you are having a bad day and can’t sit for longer than half an hour. Sit and force yourself to endure. That’s the only way to get surprised. You’ve got to keep the endurance and discipline to sit.
“You need to trust yourself, especially on a first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.”
Practice listening to and for that small inner voice. It takes practice to ignore everyone else’s. Learn to protect your great ideas.
“You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind.”
Possibly the most important:
“Take the attitude that what you are thinking and feeling is valuable stuff, and then be naive enough to get it all down on paper….if your intuition says that your story sucks, make sure it really is your intuition and not your mother.”
A way to listen to your intuition is by giving it a personna of its own. Anything that makes it into a voice that you can’t control. Some refer to the muse, the animal, etc. is mine the old man with a glass of orange juice? It has to be a personna that you can trust to guide you back home.
Lamott’s small prayer: “please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written.”
Sometimes you’ll get jealous of others. Actually, you’ll feel it often. It’s obviously pointless and detrimental but you are human so what the hell. Avoid the sources, avoid the people who able brag about themselves and just avoid all the communities, technologies and situations that bring it out from you. At least, until you get to a point where you can laugh at it. Even then, you might need a break away. That’s okay.
Give yourself permission to be a professional writer. That will help you see material in everything. It’s about the mindset shift.
Take notes however you want. Capture inspiration and things your intuition in whatever way makes sense to you. Even if the methods are suboptimal and uncoordinated, that doesn’t matter. It’ll all be okay. You aren’t going for perfect.
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A critic is someone who comes onto the battlefield after the battle is over and shoots the wounded.”
Lamott recommends a minimum quota of 300 words a day. She also recommends giving yourself a break with whatever means.
What you think is the truth is just your opinion.
Unpublished writers need attention and someone to be honest without being diminishing.
It’s not advice you need. It’s a little empathy.
“On a bad day you also don’t need a lot of advice. You just need a little empathy and affirmation, You need to feel once again that other people have confidence in you.”
Writing is often about making mistakes and feeling lost. Knowing that’s the default condition, it makes me feel a little better.
When the draft is done, consider getting feedback from someone you trust. Someone like a spouse or lifelong friend. Just a couple people who can give you honest feedback and are respectful of your work. Sometimes it might be someone who trust so dearly and admire. Most will never qualify.
The writer’s block doesn’t mean you are stuck. It means you are empty. So it’s time to go out to the world and fill up again through observation, doing and living.
When you are in a rut and don’t think you can get any work done, remind yourself to live as if you are dying because we all are.
“Time is so full for people who are dying in a conscious way, full in the way that life is for children.”
Ask yourself: “Okay, hmmm, let’s see. Dying tomorrow. What should I do today?”
Remember, there is no point in practicing if you don’t finish. So focus on getting each section done, finishing each draft and finishing through with your work. Do your 300 words and then go for a walk.
Write the books you genuinely want to see in the world. Write books that tell the stories you want, love and are fascinated by. Sometimes, others find that valuable.
“The function of freedom is to free someone else.” - Toni Morrison
“We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you’ll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you’ve already been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer’s job is to see what’s behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff.”
One way to help you find your true voice is to write as if your parents were dead. That way, you won’t be worried about their judging eyes reading over your shoulders. It takes and work to find your own voice and you really can’t do it when you are thinking about other people, even those that love you.
“You cannot write out of someone else’s big dark place; you can only write out of your own.”
“Truth, or reality, or whatever you want to call it is the bedrock of life.”
Writing is giving. The giving is its own reward. You are giving from the deepest part of yourself. Learn to be a giver. Getting published is secondary, a mere result of all the giving. Think of the sense of connection and communion you can give people just like how some books have done the same for you.
Writing also gives you the chance to the host. People are coming to your party through your book.
“Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it’s right.”
Being enough is an inside job. “If you are not enough before the gold meal, you won’t be enough with it.”
When you are stuck, write about your childhood. Explore your childhood as a way to empathize.
“Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.”
“Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don’t be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.”
“Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this.”
“This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won’t wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.”
Writing also makes you a better reader. You’ll notice how effortless some writing appears and admire it knowing how difficult it actually is.
Write with a level of concentration where you lose yourself, so you find yourself.
“To participate requires self-discipline and trust and courage, because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, as my friend Dale puts it, How alive am I willing to be?”