The Creative Independent

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

This book offers funny, poignant, and practical guidance on the writing (and creative) process from writer Anne Lamott.

One of the things that happens when you give yourself permission to start writing is that you start thinking like a writer. You start seeing everything as material.



My index-card life is not efficient or well organized. Hostile, aggressive students insist on asking what I do with all my index cards. And all I can say is that I have them, I took notes on them, and the act of having written something down gives me a fifty-fifty shot at having it filed away now in my memory. If I’m working on a book or an article, and I’ve taken some notes on index cards, I keep them with that material, paper clip them to a page of rough draft where that idea or image might bring things to life. Or I stack them on my desk along with the pages for the particular chapter or article I’m working on, so I can look at them. When I get stuck or lost or the jungle drums start beating in my head, proclaiming that the jig is about to be up and I don’t know what I’m doing and the well has run dry, I’ll look through my index cards. I try to see if there’s a short assignment on any of them that will get me writing again, give me a small sense of confidence, and help me put down one damn word after another, which is, let’s face it, what writing finally boils down to.
Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.
Title: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Author: Anne Lamott
Year: 1995
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 978-0385480017