She explains how writers can both love and hate feedback, since feedback is how we improve … but it can be hard to hear that you need to improve. Lamott emphasizes mindfulness: being aware of your inner critic and gently moving it out of the way so that you can continue writing. I enjoyed the chapters about the process of writing. (Read my review of Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd!) The writing process To be great, art has to point somewhere.' 'Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it's right. For instance, there's an entire chapter about professional jealousy, in which Lamott discusses how when you are a writer, and some other writer friends have success, you will probably have a phase where you feel jealous of them, because are they really a better writer than you are?ĭespite being nearly 20 years in print, the book still felt relevant and relatable. She digs into aspects of a writer's life that I haven't seen in other books on writing. Instead, you're going to laugh-cry at the realness of Lamott's view of what writing is: the absurd process of marching four times as many words as you'll ever need into companies of sentences, kicking half of them to the curb, supplanting half of the lonely remaining words with other, superior words, and then rearranging them all a couple times over until the result isn't horrendously terrible. You're not going to close the book dreaming of hours whiled away with quill pen in hand, penning a perfect masterpiece at your heavy walnut desk, while royalty checks stack up in your mailbox. Lamott doesn't sugar coat the writing life. Lamott pulls from her experience as an author, daughter of a writer, and a teacher of writing to make the writers who read this book feel a little less out to sea. But perhaps it's hard to describe a topic like making a living as an author in so unvarnished and candid a tone without bringing humor in to temper the sour flavor the poor starving artist life leaves on your tongue. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott (1995, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) is as real and honest as it gets-and funny, too. If you're looking for raw advice on how to write and how to live as a writer, look no further. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.' - Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, p.237 'riting and reading decrease our sense of isolation.

Bird by bird anne