The Book That Changed My Life

BIRD BY Bird, Anne Lamott's 1994 book, carries as its subtitle "Some Instructions on Writing and Life," and if you think this is far too ambitious an effort for a work that doesn't even crack 250 pages, you are dead wrong, friend. I'd been looking to jump-start my own writing for a while, and so when I saw Bird by Bird on a buy-two, get-the-third-free table at Barnes & Noble a couple of years back, I picked it up. After finishing it last fall, I tried like hell to figure out whether it would impact me more as a writer or as a person. I'm still not sure yet.

Drawing on her experience as a writing instructor, as a writer, and as a reader, Lamott presents, in bite-sized chapters, the lessons she has collected and passed on to her students over the years. Her subtitle is spot-on, for, as she demonstrates, the very things that can propel us forward as writers also help us to lead fuller and more meaningful lives as well.  It's okay, for example, to jettison people who once were friends but now are nothing more than drains on your time and energy. Life is just too short to waste precious resources nurturing such dysfunction. When it comes to applying those resources to writing, Lamott advises, write shitty first drafts, and don't worry that they're shitty, because no one will ever see them. Revise them, then revise them again. The voices that whisper that you're no good, that you have nothing to say? The hell with them. Just sit down and write. Every day. Every goddamn day. A nice piece of advice about writing, but also about making your way in the world, when you think about it.

Mostly, though, I revel in Lamott's thoughts on why writing is not merely pleasurable, but necessary. She believes that writers are seekers and tellers of truth, and that to write is to make this world a better place. Not because one is creating Art or adding to the Canon, but simply because one is telling the truth. An important corollary to Lamott -- and something I desperately needed to hear -- is that publication doesn't matter. It's the writing that matters, the writing that says the truth.

I spent years dreaming about being a full-time writer. It was reading Bird by Bird while commuting by train last autumn to and from a job that I had little interest in that helped convince me to pursue that dream. Since January I've earned a living as a writer. At some point soon, once I can determine how to carve out the time in my schedule, I hope to go further, by finally sitting down and attempting short stories, novels, essays -- the kind of things sitting way at the back end of that dream I've harbored for years. It may not go anywhere. But at least I can slay the what-if dragons. And at least when it's my turn to go, I can say I've helped make the world a better place.

Rating: ***** (of 5)

Comments

[Mark]

I have no aspirations of ever becoming a writer, but I eat up anything Lamott writes (ironically, Bird by Bird is advice on writing fiction, but I've always found that Lamott does non-fiction better).

I'm glad to read that she had such an positive affect on you - there's so much brilliant non-writing observations in the book that I often wondered how many wannabe-writers got the book looking for a more traditional how-to and just didn't get Lamott's message. She obviously got through to you.

[Tom Durso]

Thanks for the note, Mark. I've never read any of her other books, but did enjoy her pieces for Salon a while back.