Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

by Anne Lamott

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere.

And I began to notice something important. The other kids always wanted me to tell them stories of what had happened, even—or especially—when they had been there.

I could make it vivid and funny, and even exaggerate some of it so that the event became almost mythical, and the people involved seemed larger, and there was a sense of larger significance, of meaning.

I’m sure my father was the person on whom his friends relied to tell their stories, in school and college.

People looked to him to put into words what was going on.

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.

E. L. Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

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.”

You set out to tell a story of some sort, to tell the truth as you feel it, because something is calling you to do so.

Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can’t—and, in fact, you’re not supposed to—know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing.

Honey? Leave him lay where Jesus flang him.”

The evidence is in, and you are the verdict.”

Novels ought to have hope; at least, American novels ought to have hope. French novels don’t need to. We mostly win wars, they lose them.

But something must be at stake or you will have no tension and your readers will not turn the pages. Think of a hockey player—there had better be a puck out there on the ice, or he is going to look pretty ridiculous.

John Gardner wrote that the writer is creating a dream into which he or she invites the reader, and that the dream must be vivid and continuous.

Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad.

Third, you might want to try putting together two people who more than anything else in the world wish to avoid each other, people who would avoid whole cities just to make sure they won’t bump into each other.

If you are lucky, your characters may become impatient with your inability, while writing dialogue, to keep up with all they have to say. This is when you will know that you are on the right track.

The plot leads all of these people (and us) into dark woods where we find, against all odds, a woman or a man with the compass, and it still points true north. That’s the miracle, and it’s astonishing. This shaft of light, sometimes only a glimmer, both defines and thwarts the darkness.

Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

The best solution is not only to disguise and change as many characteristics as you can but also to make the fictional person a composite. Then throw in the teenie little penis and anti-Semitic leanings, and I think you’ll be Okay.

Short assignments, shitty first drafts, one-inch picture frames, Polaroids, messes, mistakes, partners.

The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages.

No matter what happens in terms of fame and fortune, dedication to writing is a marching-step forward from where you were before, when you didn’t care about reaching out to the world, when you weren’t hoping to contribute, when you were just standing there doing some job into which you had fallen.

We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.