Writer's Read: Bird by Bird
Anne Lamott, 1994
Key words
Writing, writer’s craft, creative writing, narrative writing, writing teacher, books about writing, writer’s life, personal writing, writing for beginners
Last week, I wrote about Steve Almond’s shiny new tome Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow — which could have been the title of a chapter in Bird by Bird, its 30-year-old predecessor in the uplifting-chat-about-writing space.
(My money is on Almond being as much a staple in 2054 as Lamott is in 2024.)
In a desultory series of writer interviews, I asked my subjects to mention a favorite book about writing. The title that came up again and again was Bird by Bird.
Even without those endorsements, it would make any honest list of ‘books I live by’. Although I gifted my dog-eared copy to a student a couple of years back, passages are engraved on my brain, just waiting for a glance from the mind’s eye.
Easy to love, easy to hate
This is a book so near-unanimously feted it prompted a reddit: /am_i_the_only_person_who_doesnt_like_bird_by_bird — which discussion makes is amusing and not irrelevant reading.
“It barely says anything about writing, it's full of weird metaphors and clunky prose, and it feels like an unedited memior [sic].”
“It felt like an amateur's blog about writing.”
“All the religious stuff in it really turned me off. It was among the books my mom bought me to try to "bring me back to the church" or whatever.”
None of these comments are untrue. Truthfully, the last has always troubled me because I have trouble reconciling faith in imaginary beings with the acuity required to write thought-provoking prose.
Yes, Flannery O’Connor was a determined Catholic but she was also FLANNERY O’CONNOR and, to borrow a line from Depeche Mode, seemed comfortable with the idea that God had a sick sense of humor. Lamott is not Flannery O’Connor, and her God doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor.
Yet, Bird by Bird is beloved, not least by me.
What’s its secret?
Broccoli, Birds and KFKD
Although divided into four predictable-enough sections:
Writing
The Writing Frame of Mind
Help Along the Way
Publication — and Other Reasons to Write
There is little conventional about the approach and tone.
Among the reddit detractors the advice “listen to your broccoli” came in for special notice. It is, as Lamott acknowledges, a crib from Mel Brooks. But from there she veers into how “so many of us lost access to our broccoli when we were children” because their parents wouldn’t tell them the truth, or acknowledge the truth and
“You nodded, even though you knew these were lies, because it was important to stay on the adults’ good side… if you questioned them too adamantly, you’d probably get sent to your room without dinner, or they’d drive a stake through your ankles and leave you on the hillside above the Mobil station.”
Which is so loopy and so damn specific that, like it or not, the image of a hobbled child withering in the cold above a blood-red winged horse will be with you forever.
The image is so vivid it might detract from the author’s point. Or serve to obscure the fact the point isn’t that sharp.
But then Lamott says something like,
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.
It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.”
And anyone who has ever felt a little bad, a little stressed about the quality of their writing — which is everyone who has ever written — smiles in recognition and murmurs, go on, sister.
What practical advice Lamott does dispense, between riffs on broccoli, is useful and grass-burr sticky. Her one-inch frame is probably the most renowned piece of tiny stationary in contemporary craft literature:
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. This is all I have to bite off for the time being.
Another much-highlighted outtake is from section two, The Writing Frame of Mind, in which she urgently advises writers to tune out radio station KFKD.
If you are not careful, station KFKD will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, of all the mistakes one has made… the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit.
As with stake-through-ankles, even if you don’t see yourself in this picture (but I guess most writers do) the words snap like pennants in her breezy prose. They accomplish what writers crave — and therefore envy — ease and memorability.
My take
Bird by Bird is endearing, and enduring, for its unapologetic quirkiness and unflagging optimism. It will be awful, this writing thing, Lamott repeats, in so many words, and in so many more words. But it will also be precious and empowering and meaningful in ways no one who loves it can adequately explain.
A lot of time, writers just need to hear that what they are doing is something in a world prone to asking, with furrowed brow: “How do you make a living at that?”
Lamott is the ideal companion for clogged-washing-machine days and white-bread-and-margarine days. Writing won’t mop your floor, or add one iota of nutrient value to that dozenth slice, but it will empower you to tell your own story.
Their take
“Lamott is anything but earnest. She is a class A smart aleck, a relentless smart aleck in the fine tradition of J.D. Salinger.
This is delicious icing on the cake in the practical passages about how to write. It’s kind of unnecessary in the passages about oneness and compassion. She’s a graceful enough writer to make these things palatable without having to entertain everybody all the time.”
— Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times, Oct 21, 1994
Must read for
Writers seeking chatty company for the journey.
Read also
Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg
A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas
Nothing Good Can Come From This by Kristi Coulter