Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

by Anne Lamott

with our psychic muscles. They cramp around our wounds—the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both—to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So those wounds never have a chance to heal. Perfectionism is one way our muscles cramp. In some cases we don’t even know that the wounds and the cramping are there, but both limit us. They keep us moving and writing in tight, worried ways.

What people somehow (inadvertently, I’m sure) forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here—and, by extension, what we’re supposed to be writing.

The garden is one of the two great metaphors for humanity. The other, of course, is the river.

Then, as now, the garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things.

in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time. And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth and growth and beauty and danger and triumph—and then everything dies anyway, right? But you just keep doing it.

public herd mentality is not swayed by the magic that happens when mind and heart and muse and hand and paper work together. Rather, it is guided by talk shows and movie producers and TV commercials. Still, you’d probably like the caribou herd to run in your direction for a while.

Money won’t guarantee these writers much of anything, except that now they have a much more expensive set of problems. The pressure on their lives has actually intensified.

My deepest belief is that to live as if we’re dying can set us free. Dying people teach you to pay attention and to forgive and not to sweat the small things.

“I just listen,” he said. “They all tell me these incredibly long, self-important, convoluted stories. And then I say one of three things: I say, ‘Uh-huh,’ I say, ‘Hmmm,’ I say, Too bad.’ ” I laughed. Then I started telling him about this awful friend I had who was doing so well. He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Uh-huh.”

started telling myself that if you want to know how God feels about money, look at whom she gives it to.

yet by the time you get around to everything on any one list, you’re already behind on another.

Some will float into your head like goldfish, lovely, bright orange, and weightless, and you follow them like a child looking at an aquarium that was thought to be without fish. Others will step out of the shadows like Boo Radley and make you catch your breath or take a step backward. They’re often so rich, these unbidden thoughts, and so clear that they feel indelible. But I say write them all down anyway.

I don’t think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect. You don’t want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath.

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.

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.