Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come. Anne Lamott is "a warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer’s world and its treacherous swamps" (Los Angeles Times).

“Superb writing advice…. Hilarious, helpful, and provocative.” —The New York Times Book Review

For a quarter century, more than a million readers—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne’s father—also a writer—in the iconic passage that gives the book its title:

“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.’”

Amazon.com Review

Think you've got a book inside of you? Anne Lamott isn't afraid to help you let it out. She'll help you find your passion and your voice, beginning from the first really crummy draft to the peculiar letdown of publication. Readers will be reminded of the energizing books of writer Natalie Goldberg and will be seduced by Lamott's witty take on the reality of a writer's life, which has little to do with literary parties and a lot to do with jealousy, writer's block and going for broke with each paragraph. Marvelously wise and best of all, great reading.

Review

“Superb writing advice. . . . Hilarious, helpful, and provocative.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“A warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer’s world and its treacherous swamps.”
—Los Angeles Times

“One of the funniest books on writing ever published.”
—The Christian Science Monitor

“A gift to all of us mortals who write or ever wanted to write. . . . Sidesplittingly funny, patiently wise and alternately cranky and kind—a reveille to get off our duffs and start writing now, while we still can.”
—Seattle Times

“Bird by Bird would be worth reading just for Lamott’s ele- gant, moving, and often-hilarious prose. But the advice she offers is just as fantastic as the style with which it’s delivered.”
—Forbes

“Anne Lamott understands better than anyone that writers need help. . . . She writes so well, in fact, that it’s hard to believe that she, too, has trouble with writing. That’s what’s so deeply comforting about this book.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Deftly and honestly explores the mental challenges of being a writer. . . . Lamott’s advice is, simply put, invaluable.”
—Bustle

“[Lamott] uses her writing exercises or lessons as a way to help us more deeply understand ourselves and the human condition in all its messiness. If you’re looking for sense-making and meaning during this deeply destabilizing time, this book is timeless.”
—Elise Hu, TED Talks Daily

“Delight[s] with insight and descriptive acumen. This humorous, insightful, no-nonsense approach will remind novices why they are writing.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Offers unique inspiration. . . . An honest appraisal of what it takes to be a writer and why it matters so much.”
—Library Journal

From the Publisher

"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.'"

"Superb writing advice... hilarious, helpful and provocative." -- New York Times Book Review.

"A warm, generous and hilarious guide through the writer's world and its treacherous swamps." -- Los Angeles Times.

"A gift to all of us mortals who write or ever wanted to write... sidesplittingly funny, patiently wise and alternately cranky and kind -- a reveille to get off our duffs and start writing now, while we still can." -- Seattle Times.

From the Inside Flap

From the Back Cover

About the Author

ANNE LAMOTT is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Almost Everything; Hallelujah Anyway; Help, Thanks, Wow; Small Victories; Stitches; Some Assembly Required; Grace (Eventually); Plan B; Traveling Mercies; and Operating Instructions. She is also the author of seven novels, including Imperfect Birds and Rosie. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Getting Started

The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out. Year after year my students are bursting with stories to tell, and they start writing projects with excitement and maybe even joy—finally their voices will be heard, and they are going to get to devote themselves to this one thing they’ve longed to do since childhood. But after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be about as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat. Some lose faith. Their sense of self and story shatters and crumbles to the ground. Historically they show up for the first day of the workshop looking like bright goofy ducklings who will follow me anywhere, but by the time the second class rolls around, they look at me as if the engagement is definitely off.

“I don’t even know where to start,” one will wail.

Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O’Connor said that anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don’t worry about doing it well yet, though. Just start getting it down.

Now, the amount of material may be so overwhelming that it can make your brain freeze. When I had been writing food reviews for a number of years, there were so many restaurants and individual dishes in my brainpan that when people asked for a recommendation, I couldn’t think of a single restaurant where I’d ever actually eaten. But if the person could narrow it down to, say, Indian, I might remember one lavish Indian palace, where my date had asked the waiter for the Rudyard Kipling sampler and later for the holy-cow tartare. Then a number of memories would come to mind, of other dates and other Indian restaurants.

So you might start by writing down every single thing you can remember from your first few years in school. Start with kindergarten. Try to get the words and memories down as they occur to you. Don’t worry if what you write is no good, because no one is going to see it. Move on to first grade, to second, to third. Who were your teachers, your classmates? What did you wear? Who and what were you jealous of? Now branch out a little. Did your family take vacations during those years? Get these down on paper. Do you remember how much more presentable everybody else’s family looked? Do you remember how when you’d be floating around in an inner tube on a river, your own family would have lost the little cap that screws over the airflow valve, so every time you got in and out of the inner tube, you’d scratch new welts in your thighs? And how other families never lost the caps?

If this doesn’t pan out, or if it does but you finish mining this particular vein, see if focusing on holidays and big events helps you recollect your life as it was. Write down everything you can remember about every birthday or Christmas or Seder or Easter or whatever, every relative who was there. Write down all the stuff you swore you’d never tell another soul. What can you recall about your birthday parties—the disasters, the days of grace, your relatives’ faces lit up by birthday candles? Scratch around for details: what people ate, listened to, wore—those terrible petaled swim caps, the men’s awful trunks, the cocktail dress your voluptuous aunt wore that was so slinky she practically needed the Jaws of Life to get out of it. Write about the women’s curlers with the bristles inside, the garters your father and uncles used to hold up their dress socks, your grandfathers’ hats, your cousins’ perfect Brownie uniforms, and how your own looked like it had just been hatched. Describe the trench coats and stoles and car coats, what they revealed and what they covered up. See if you can remember what you were given that Christmas when you were ten, and how it made you feel inside. Write down what the grown-ups said and did after they’d had a couple of dozen drinks, especially that one Fourth of July when your father made Fish House punch and the adults practically had to crawl from room to room.

Remember that you own what happened to you. If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point at you, while a chilling voice thundered, “We told you not to tell.” But that was then. Just put down on paper everything you can remember now about your parents and siblings and relatives and neighbors, and we will deal with libel later on.

“But how?” my students ask. “How do you actually do it?”

You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind—a scene, a locale, a character, whatever—and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys. They are the voices of anxiety, judgment, doom, guilt. Also, severe hypochondria. There may be a Nurse Ratched–like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk. There is a vague pain at the base of your neck. It crosses your mind that you have meningitis. Then the phone rings and you look up at the ceiling with fury, summon every ounce of noblesse oblige, and answer the call politely, with maybe just the merest hint of irritation. The caller asks if you’re working, and you say yeah, because you are.

Yet somehow in the face of all this, you clear a space for the writing voice, hacking away at the others with machetes, and you begin to compose sentences. You begin to string words together like beads to tell a story. You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.

I wish I had a secret I could let you in on, some formula my father passed on to me in a whisper just before he died, some code word that has enabled me to sit at my desk and land flights of creative inspiration like an air-traffic controller. But I don’t. All I know is that the process is pretty much the same for almost everyone I know. 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. It is a little like when you have something difficult to discuss with someone, and as you go to do it, you hope and pray that the right words will come if only you show up and make a stab at it. And often the right words do come, and you—well—“write” for a while; you put a lot of thoughts down on paper. But the bad news is that if you’re at all like me, you’ll probably read over what you’ve written and spend the rest of the day obsessing, and praying that you do not die before you can completely rewrite or destroy what you have written, lest the eagerly waiting world learn how bad your first drafts are.

The obsessing may keep you awake, or the self-loathing may cause you to fall into a narcoleptic coma before dinner. But let’s just say that you do fall asleep at a normal hour. Then the odds are that you will wake up at four in the morning, having dreamed that you have died. Death turns out to feel much more frantic than you had imagined. Typically you’ll try to comfort yourself by thinking about the day’s work—the day’s excrementitious work. You may experience a jittery form of existential dread, considering the absolute meaninglessness of life and the fact that no one has ever really loved you; you may find yourself consumed with a free-floating shame, and a hopelessness about your work, and the realization that you will have to throw out everything you’ve done so far and start from scratch. But you will not be able to do so. Because you suddenly understand that you are completely riddled with cancer.

And then the miracle happens. The sun comes up again. So you get up and do your morning things, and one thing leads to another, and eventually, at nine, you find yourself back at the desk, staring blankly at the pages you filled yesterday. And there on page four is a paragraph with all sorts of life in it, smells and sounds and voices and colors and even a moment of dialogue that makes you say to yourself, very, very softly, “Hmmm.” You look up and stare out the window again, but this time you are drumming your fingers on the desk, and you don’t care about those first three pages; those you will throw out, those you needed to write to get to that 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. Think of a fine painter attempting to capture an inner vision, beginning with one corner of the canvas, painting what he thinks should be there, not quite pulling it off, covering it over with white paint, and trying again, each time finding out what his painting isn’t, until finally he finds out what it is.

And when you do find out what one corner of your vision is, you’re off and running. And it really is like running. It always reminds me of the last lines of Rabbit, Run: “his heels hitting heavily on the pavement at first but with an effortless gathering out of a kind of sweet panic growing lighter and quicker and quieter, he runs. Ah: runs. Runs.”

I wish I felt that kind of inspiration more often. I almost never do. All I know is that if I sit there long enough, something will happen.

My students stare at me for a moment. “How do we find an agent?” they ask.

I sigh. When you are ready, there are books that list agents. You can select a few names and write to them and ask if they would like to take a look at your work. Mostly they will not want to. But if you are really good, and very persistent, someone eventually will read your material and take you on. I can almost promise you this. However, in the meantime, we are going to concentrate on writing itself, on how to become a better writer, because, for one thing, becoming a better writer is going to help you become a better reader, and that is the real payoff.

But my students don’t believe me. They want agents, and to be published. And they also want refunds.

Almost all of them have been writing at least for a little while, some of them all of their lives. Many of them have been told over the years that they are quite good, and they want to know why they feel so crazy when they sit down to work, why they have these wonderful ideas and then they sit down and write one sentence and see with horror that it is a bad one, and then every major form of mental illness from which they suffer surfaces, leaping out of the water like trout—the delusions, hypochondria, the grandiosity, the self-loathing, the inability to track one thought to completion, even the hand-washing fixation, the Howard Hughes germ phobias. And especially, the paranoia.

You can be defeated and disoriented by all these feelings, I tell them, or you can see the paranoia, for instance, as wonderful material. You can use it as the raw clay that you pull out of the river: surely one of your characters is riddled with it, and so in giving that person this particular quality, you get to use it, shape it into something true and funny or frightening. I read them a poem by Phillip Lopate that someone once sent me, that goes:

We who are

your closest friends

feel the time

has come to tell you

that every Thursday

we have been meeting,

as a group,

to devise ways

to keep you

in perpetual uncertainty

frustration

discontent and

torture

by neither loving you

as much as you want

nor cutting you adrift.

Your analyst is

in on it,

plus your boyfriend

and your ex-husband;

and we have pledged

to disappoint you

as long as you need us.

In announcing our

association

we realize we have

placed in your hands

a possible antidote

against uncertainty

indeed against ourselves.

But since our Thursday nights

have brought us

to a community

of purpose

rare in itself

with you as

the natural center,

we feel hopeful you

will continue to make unreasonable

demands for affection

if not as a consequence

of your disastrous personality

then for the good of the collective.

Review:

5.0 out of 5

100.00% of customers are satisfied

5.0 out of 5 stars Attention: Writers! This book is for all of us, new or old pros at the craft.

F.B. · March 28, 2015

Some - because it's too many to list ALL - of reasons I loved Bird by Bird as a writer, an entrepreneur and a human being with stories to share and thoughts to voice - just like you.I wish I had read the Kindle version so I could highlight every chapter and re-read them later, but I got the physical book to add it to the small shelf of books I still keep in my office, and next to the copy of my most favorite book on the topic: On Writing by Stephen King. Bird by Bird is now the 2nd best and useful book I have read on writing.If I weren't inspired to write before, I felt my body fill up with reasons that now draw me to writing. If I had voices of doubt, the ones that slip into your head at 4am and whisper, "Who are you to write? What do you have to say that others want to read?", which I did, I am now courageous enough to ignore them. They don't go away but I can say, screw you, I'm writing anyway.I now can't not write and this feeling is one that I just can't put a price on. For that alone, I'm overjoyed. But there's more.For starters, it's the way she tells you to write about your childhood. It's the simplicity of this advice, and the way she just calls you to do it. I loved her just for that. Write about your childhood even if it was terrible, even if it was dark and lonely, for it shaped you into who you are and who you are is a unique voice for the world to hear. Okay I added all of that but she says it more beautifully and the gist of it says that thou must write about thy childhood especially when you do not know where to start. Make it a good story, turn the bad characters into a description that if they were to read your book, they would not recognize themselves except for their actions - that's apparently how you save yourself from libel - and then just write.I cried at various points in this book and the whole spiel about childhood was one of them, but the others were when she described why we write, and what brings us to the blank page, and how it's not about being published - and it really isn't, I've been published twice and my book has ranked among best-selling categories and sold thousands of copies and it was fun yes but writing is about so much more.If you weren't enough before you published, she quotes someone, then you won't be enough after, and that will stay with me. We all write for our own reasons, and if you feel drawn to writing, if you feel a call to writing and you have been resisting it, stop. Ignoring this urge is like neglecting hunger or thirst just because you are too stubborn to accept the laws of nature. Go with the flow, drop your excuses and write what you feel called upon to write.I also love the writing style of Bird by Bird. She does not break down writing into distinct categories and address each. She simply tells us stories and personal experience and her amazing nuggets of wisdom come through, just oozing out of the page. It is the stories that help you remember the bigger points she was making, and a very similar style as King's On Writing, which helps you learn not just about writing but about the writer's life and highs and lows and how writing integrates into their life, and the big picture.Bird by Bird is sweet, refreshing, funny, and even if Lamott over-dramatizes the life of an author - or perhaps, mine is under-dramatic, who knows - I love her for it. I love that she was oh so vulnerable, and how she dished out tough love and great advice and in the end, simply encouraged us to write. Just write those stories down and do it for reasons that go well beyond publication, fortune, fame, or other dreams that you may have for your writing, because writing is its own sweet delicious fulfilling reward. Add this book to your list of must-read books, my writer friends, and let's put our stories out in the world if not for anyone but ourselves.

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest, humorous and full of passion, Bird by Bird is a how-to guide to approaching writing as a life path.

L. · December 9, 2016

Bird by Bird is Anne Lamott’s love song to the writing process and Anne Lamott’s detailed 12-step program for surviving the craft of writing. Using a loving and humorous voice, she shares intimate details of her experience as a writer, reader and teacher. She relies heavily on humorous stories from her childhood and early writing career to illustrate the pitfalls and joys of writing, while doling out a treasure chest of practical advice to the aspiring and experienced writer. Bird by Bird is a pep talk and a how-to guide to approaching writing as a life path.I’ve read this book many times over the years, and what I always remember most is her description of her relationship with her father, who was also a writer. More than anything Bird by Bird is a memoir, and the reason it has touched so many hearts and inspired so many careers, is because Anne Lamott wears her heart and her life story on her sleeve as she shares intimate and hard won life lessons on and off the page. She writes, “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.” I love this line because it reminds me to give myself permission to be, to remember, to observe and to create. Like Anne Lamott, I grew up in the shadow of loving, charming and powerful writer. I learned the craft and life of a writer from my Mom, and it wasn’t until later in life that I realized that everyone didn’t grow up that way.Reading through with a highlighter this time, I was struck by all the voices Anne Lamott brings to the page. Lammott’s voice is primarily humorous, frank and self deprecating. When she wants to evoke something profound, grave or aspirational, she tends to lean on the voices of her favorite writers throughout the cannon, which she either paraphrases or quotes directly. I really admire this technique, it’s such a great way to vary her advice, give her message more credence while keeping the book in her voice. I want to remember this. There’s a nice example of this early on when she’s talking about what inspires someone to write, she writes, “Interviewers ask famous writers why they write, and it was (if I remember correctly) the poet John Ashbery who answered, “Because I want to.” Flannery O’Connnor answered, “Because I’m good at it,” and when the occasional interviewer asks me, I quote them both.” By bringing Ashbery and O’Connor into the conversation, Lammot elevates her personal experience to a universal truth.Another one of my favorite aspects of this guide / memoir is the realistic depiction of not only the writing but the publishing experience. She debunks every single romantic notion of writing – while carefully creating her own shrine to the experience. One of my favorite moments is when she breaks down any hope of a feeling of satisfaction for a writer. She perfectly sums up the endless aching and seeking inherent to the writing life. She writes:How do you know when you’re done?This is question my students always ask. I don’t quite know how to answer it. You just do. I think my students believe that when a published writer finishes something, she crosses the last t, pushes back from the desk, yawn, stretches, and smiles. I do not know anyone who has ever done this, not even once,”This excerpt makes me laugh out loud every time I read it. I think because in my experience as a publicist / publisher I do know some authors who have done this, and those are the ones I fear most.Honest, humorous and full of passion, this book separates the die-hards from the casual writers, it’s like a litmus test and hazing, and if you make it to the end you emerge a convert.

A Superb Source of Inspiration and Ideas

G.L. · September 8, 2024

Very well written — inspiring and practical at the same time. Full of self-effacing humour.One of the best books on writing around.

Inspiring

M. · November 17, 2023

Writer’s block, slump, depression, self doubt or just starting to write? This book helps you find your rhythm and begin. Funny with great ideas and interesting anecdotes from the author’s large makes this an enjoyable non fiction. To be re-read repeatedly.

Precioso

A.B.B. · September 29, 2023

Un muy buen libro, sobre todo para los amantes de la lectura.

Simple, concise, funny

A.C. · May 11, 2023

Such an easy read! So practical and heartfelt. I recommend it for lifting your spirits and not give up on writing.

It's a good book (:

C.A.M.O. · October 25, 2020

It's a sincere essay on why we may find it hard to write some times. Sincerity is really valuable in a book on a topic like this, it means that even if you can't relate to everything that's written on it at a literal level, it will connect with you through your feelings as a struggling human being in front of a daunting task, which in this case, is writing something. It's an enjoyable read and by no means it has made me an expert writer, but I'm sure I learnt something and you don't get to say that every day.

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Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Name: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Brand: Vintage
SKU: U0385480016
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Rating: 4.6 (7 reviews)

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