Introduction

I've written a previous review of Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott as I was really taken by her knowledge as a writer and author. Then I realized how many of her great lessons I had copied into a separate note to keep on hand and to review from time to time. I'm sharing those gold nuggets with you now in a succinct manner for you to reflect and learn. Her book is worth reviewing in its entirety, but if you don't have time, at least read this post!

I've organized them into two categories: one on improving your writing craft and the other on life as an author.

Writing Craft Lessons

But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up.

One line of dialogue that rings true reveals character in a way that pages of description can’t.

You wouldn’t be a writer if reading hadn’t enriched your soul more than other pursuits.

To be great, art has to point somewhere.

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.

Don’t be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.

Becoming a writer can also profoundly change your life as a reader. One reads with a deeper appreciation and concentration, knowing now how hard writing is, especially how hard it is to make it look effortless. You begin to read with a writer’s eyes. You focus in a new way. You study how someone portrays his or her version of things in a way that is new and bold and original.

You don’t even have to know how or in what way, but if you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

Life as an Author

“Do it every day for a while,” my father kept saying. “Do it as you would do scales on the piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honor. And make a commitment to finishing things.” (Anne Lamott's father instructing her to write daily.)

Quieting these voices is at least half the battle I fight daily. But this is better than it used to be. It used to be 87 percent. Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who aren’t there. (Anne doubting herself and her capabilities.)

You are going to have to give and give and give, or there’s no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

Your three-year-old and your work in progress teach you to give. They teach you to get out of yourself and become a person for someone else. This is probably the secret to happiness. So that’s one reason to write. Your child and your work hold you hostage, suck you dry, ruin your sleep, mess with your head, treat you like dirt, and then you discover they’ve given you that gold nugget you were looking for all along.

But the fact of publication is the acknowledgment from the community that you did your writing right. You acquire a rank that you never lose. Now you’re a published writer, and you are in that rare position of getting to make a living, such as it is, doing what you love best. That knowledge does bring you a quiet joy.

All that I know about the relationship between publication and mental health was summed up in one line of the movie Cool Runnings, which is about the first Jamaican bobsled team. The coach is a four-hundred-pound man who had won a gold in Olympic bobsledding twenty years before but has been a complete loser ever since. The men on his team are desperate to win an Olympic medal, just as half the people in my classes are desperate to get published. But the coach says, “If you’re not enough before the gold medal, you won’t be enough with it.” You may want to tape this to the wall near your desk.

Try not to feel sorry for yourselves, I say, when you find the going hard and lonely. You seem to want to write, so write.

One can find in writing a perfect focus for life. It offers challenge and delight and agony and commitment. We see our work as a vocation, with the potential to be as rich and enlivening as the priesthood. As a writer, one will have over the years many experiences that stimulate and nourish the spirit.

“So why does our writing matter, again?” they ask. Because of the spirit, I say. Because of the heart. Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.

Call to Action

Bird by Bird is a masterpiece on the writing journey and life. There are many more lessons contained within Bird by Bird than I have shared here. Check them out and buy your own copy if you have the time and a few bucks.

Other resources to help you improve your craft

Check out our Writing Apps page for the writing tools we use and recommend: Writing Apps

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"Enhance your knowledge, sharpen your skills,

and improve your craft word by word -- or blog by blog!"

Steve Shipley: Author and founder of InkIT Publishing