Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Finished this book over a month ago but delayed the update because I felt so many feelings and didn't quite know how to write a ‘review'. Have decided to pay homage with a blogpost. Here's hoping I will actually get around to it.

But seriously, just read it. And then read it again. There's too much in here that simply can't be internalised in one reading.

Il fallait bien que je sois déçu dans ma série de lectures sur l'écriture. C'est arrivé, avec ce livre de l'autrice américain Anne Lamott.

Cela commençait pourtant bien, avec un ton chaleureux et la promesse de conseils tirés de ses cours d'écriture à l'université. Malheureusement, les anecdotes personnelles prennent trop souvent le pas sur le sujet de l'écriture. Je n'ai rien contre le fait qu'un auteur mette quelque chose de personnel dans ses textes, bien au contraire, c'est souvent ainsi que c'est le meilleur. Mais dans ce cas précis, je me suis perdu dans les histoires personnelles de l'autrice, incapable de faire le tri entre ce qui relève de l'anecdote et ce qui est vraiment utile pour comprendre sa manière d'aborder l'écriture.

Finalement, j'ai l'impression d'avoir lu quelque chose entre les mémoires d'Anne Lamott et ses conseils d'écriture, dans un mélange un peu difforme et indigeste.

BIrd by Bird has been on my radar for years and I am so glad I finally picked this book up. This is the 25th anniversary of its publication, and her advice about life and writing is as relevant today as it was when she first wrote them.

If you watched Ted Lasso and you remember when he said “Bird by Bird” but you didn't know what it meant- here you go. It's from Anne Lamont's famed book and that story is worth the read. Plus so much more.

She packs in so much wit and wisdom I plan to go back through my copy with a highlighter. It's that kind of read. And I'm not usually one for those kinds of books.

Bird by Bird started off really well for me. The language Anne uses is engaging and descriptive. She uses narrative to teach and her stories made me want to keep reading. I was thoroughly enjoying the book at first, and appreciated some of the golden nuggets scattered throughout.

One of the passages I especially loved was this:

??????for some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don???t get in real life - wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I???m grateful for it the way I???m grateful for the ocean.???

Later, though, it started to feel more muddy and I started feeling like I was having to slog through it. It lost some interest for me and started to sound more jaded and troubled. I found myself feeling like I had to force myself to keep reading. Though I did finish it, I will admit that I read through the last chapters more hurriedly than I had the first ones.

I routinely take a star off of my ratings for the presence of strong language in books (it's just not my thing), so do note that without that, my rating for this book would have been 3 stars.

Keep this on the QT, but I've always dreamed of being a writer. Bird by Bird made writing seem so delightfully horrible that I've read this book over and over. It's peculiar that I've read this book on writing a half dozen times and yet I've never written a review of it.

I listened to all six hours and six minutes of this book yesterday, and it reminded me of how much I want to write, and not because I want to be published, but because I want to sort things out.

It was definitely an interesting experience to read this book. To be honest, there wasn't a lot of new information about how to write that I haven't read anywhere else already. But that's not really Lamott's fault, since, in the end, the key to successful writing is to just do it everyday – or bird by bird.

This book starts well but meanders off the rails, as many of Lamott's anecdotes and examples are not as useful or amusing as she seems to think. When it's good, it's one of the more enjoyable books about writing that I've read so far. When it's bad, it's a toxic cocktail of condescension and insecurity that comes off as more repellent than relatable.

I started out taking notes, then stopped. By the end I was just relieved not to be Lamott's friend or student. Whether she's jokingly wishing cancer scares on her successful peers, likening being a writer to having a mental illness or autism, pouring scorn on students who dare to dream of being published, describing a Chilean author's work as “like primitive art”, or saying that people at the Special Olympics all “bear a familial resemblance”, her off-putting tangents quickly outweigh the usefulness of her advice. Add a dose of irrelevant God-bothering and it's like she set out to get on my last nerve.

At one point, Lamott describes receiving a note from a magazine editor, which says, “You have made the mistake of thinking that everything that has happened to you is interesting.” She says it was mortifying, but it clearly wasn't mortifying enough to prevent this book.

Anyway, the advice boils down to: persist with writing, even if it sucks, and don't be afraid to ask for help. You already knew that.

Phenomenal.
Funny. Forthright. Tender. Snarky. Just wonderful.

Of all the craft/advice books I have read, this one stands apart. The advice is thorough and well contextualized and written with careful thought. She writes like a mentor. She writes like a teacher. She writes like a friend.

So good. Recommend.