Every month I put together a series of Illustrated Booknotes on books that I’ve read and are useful to me.
This month we’re looking at ‘Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - ‘Some Instructions on Wirting and Life’
About Anne Lamott
Anne Lamott
Anne Lamott is the author of several novels including Rosie, Joe Jones, and All New People. She also teaches writing in California.
How to use these booknotes
You may find it helpful to substitute the word ‘writing’ for ‘drawing’ or whatever artistic pursuit or passion you follow. I find that her instructions are applicable to many areas and not just writing.
For these booknotes, I would recommend taking one or two points that stick with you, and then trying to put them into practice. As with anything, unless you try it out for yourself, reading alone won’t take you anywhere.
These booknotes are listed in the order I read them. I selected them because they resonated with me.
And now, the booknotes…
He could go anyplace he wanted with a sense of purpose. One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.
Writing taught my father to pay attention.
James Thurber - image from Thurber House
Thurber was right when he said, “You might as well fall flat on. your face as lean over too far backwards.”
We all ended up just the tiniest bit resentful when we found the one fly in the ointment: that at some point we had to actually sit down and write.
I understood immediately the thrill of seeing oneself in print. It provides some sort of primal verification: you are in print; therefore you exist.
Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere.
“A life orientated to leisure is in the end a life orientated to death - the greatest leisure of all.”
He could take major events or small episodes from fail y life and shade or exaggerate things in such a way as to capture their shape and substance, capture what life felt like.
Do your scales everyday
“Do it everyday for a while....Do it as you would scales on the piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honour. And make a commitment to finishing things.”
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch ad work: you don’t give up.
Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. The thing you had to force yourself to do. - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.
It’s because and I want to and I’m good at it.
When my writer friends are working, they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time. And sometimes when they are writing well, they feel that they are living up to something. It is as if the right words, the true words, are already inside them, and they just want to help them get out. Writing this way is a little like miking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.
Good writing is about telling the truth.
Bathing a cat
After a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be about as easy as bathing a cat.
“I don’t even know where to start”
Start with your childhood. Write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O’Conner said that anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or herr life.
Scratch around for details: what people ate, listened to, wore.
Remember that you own what happened to you.
You sit down. 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.
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.
Sit there long enough
All I know is that if I sit there long enough, something will happen.
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. There is a door we all want to walk through and writing can help you find it and open it.
What’s real is that if you do your scales every day, if you slowly try harder and harder pieces, if you listen to great musicians play music you love, you’ll get better.
The two single most helpful things I can tell you about writing
Short assignments
I put a one-inch picture frame on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame.
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night
E.L Doctorow once’s said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night, You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three get ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard.
Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. You have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.
G.K. Chesterton - image from Britannica
“Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.” - G. K. Chesterton
Summary
I hope these Illustrated Booknotes have been useful to you.
I highly recommend picking up your own copy of ‘Bird by Bird’, it’s a very entertaining read as well as containing lots of useful instructions on writing that can also be applied to other arts and passions as well.
What’s next
I put out a Cartoon Newsletter containing a whole host of characters and occasional cartooning tips. Add your name and mail to the orange box below and I’ll wing a copy your way.
