Book Review: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont

Review by Jeanette O'Hagan


Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird is considered a classic writing craft book and has inspired a generation of writers. Like most popular books, it gets mixed reviews on Goodreads (though an over all positive rating). It is, perhaps, one of those books you love - or hate.

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. 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.”  Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

The Book:

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and LifeAnne Lamott
Anchor Books: 1995
Available at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-Life/dp/0385480016/

The Author:

Anne Lamott is an American novelist and non-fiction writer.  She writes about love and loss in her novels and explores parenthood, flaws, faith, and the craft of writing in her non-fiction with a self-effacing and gritty humour.

My thoughts:

I was a little unsure when I first started reading Bird by Bird. Lamott starts with an autobiographical recounting of growing up with her writer father and his bohemian writer friends, of her own first attempts at writing a hopelessly flawed short story titled Arnold - and her search for publication, which only came after writing about her father's death.  Like Stephen King's On Writing, the writing tips or instruction in Bird by Bird are woven with a strong autobiographical thread - which is perhaps its strength and also its weakness.

Lamott's tone is conversational. She addresses a range of issues that writers face, in part as a report of what she teaches her students and how they react to her teachings (often with horror), in part a direct conversation with the reader, in part flights of creative writing and almost stream of consciousness flourishes that can be wickedly humorous or deeply moving or even at times mildly annoying (perhaps depending on one's mood and experience). 

If you are looking for a paint-by-numbers or follow-the-formula approach to writing - you won't find it here. Lamott's process is deeply intuitive and largely 'pantsting' and highly creative. And the book is as much, or more, about what it means to be a writer, the writing life, as it about nutting out a perfectly structured plot or tracing a compelling character arc. As important as plot structure and character arcs, internal wounds and mirror moments may be - I found myself resonating to Bird by Bird in a deeper way than more 'how-to' writing books (which often detail the 'one' way to do things that only the writer has discovered). 

There are definitely gems of advice and insight in Lamott's musings - some of which may have become truisms over time. She deals with issues of perfectionism, insecurities, shitty first drafts, writers block, the need to fill the creative well and to be kind to our writerly selves, as well how to discover our characters (like an image emerging from Polaroid photo), go deep into the pain, discovering one's voice, and the proper weight of publication. Above all, she reminds us that the reward of writing is not outward accolades, but the joys (and pains) of writing itself. And through it all, she is brutally honest and bitingly funny. And here and there, she gives us poignant glimpses of faith and grace.

I found Anne Lamott and Bird by Bird  a refreshing and inspiring read.

*****



Jeanette started spinning tales in the world of Nardva at the age of eight or nine. She enjoys writing secondary world fiction, poetry, blogging and editing. Her Nardvan stories span continents, time and cultures. They involve a mixture of courtly intrigue, adventure, romance and/or shapeshifters and magic users. She has published numerous short stories, poems, two novellas and her debut novel, Akrad's Children. Find her on Facebook or at her webpages Jeanette O'Hagan Writes or Jenny's Thread.

When should we stop writing?

Two family members spurred this post, which I shared on my own blog a little while back.

1) My sister sent me a photograph of her thesis, which she'd finished at last, and said, "Here's the result of 5 years of hard work, handed in today!"

2) My son walked in on the last day of Uni holidays and announced that he was about to pull an all-nighter, since he had a 2000 word essay due by midnight the following day and hadn't even chosen a topic! I said, "How can you leave it this late and still be so chilled?" His reply was, "I refuse to work over my holidays." He's used to my horrified reactions and usually manages to pull something off.

So how long is a reasonable time to spend on whatever you're writing? Different projects take different lengths of time to complete, of course. I usually take about twelve to eighteen months to work on a book of my own, but when I worked on The Greenfield Legacy with three co-authors, we took about a quarter of that time. But how do we ever know when we've put in enough work? When do we come to the point where we can confidently state, "This is the best I have to offer"?

It's not necessarily accurate for everyone to say something like, "It should be two hours for a book review, six weeks for an essay, 1.5 years for a novel and 5 years for a major thesis." We're all way different from others. My son thinks he works best under pressure, while I hate the feeling of deadlines looming over my head. Other variables include how familiar we feel with the subject, how much research will be involved, and what else is going on in our lives at the same time. Rather than setting fixed time estimates, I believe there's another, more foolproof way of figuring out when to stop.

I think the Law of Diminishing Returns might be handy here. We've all experienced how any given thing becomes less beneficial or satisfactory the longer we indulge. In terms of a block of chocolate, the first square is heavenly. We may close our eyes and sigh, while our taste buds and tummies are screaming at us to have some more. The second square is still delicious, so we keep nibbling away. If we don't stop at a crucial moment though, we'll get to the last square, and find ourselves feeling squeamish and bloated. By then, even the flavour may strike us as sickly sweet. There's a point at which we all should stop, and if we don't, we find ourselves on a downhill slope.

In terms of working on a written project, here are a few clues I've noticed to tell me I've passed that point, and it'll all be diminishing returns from now on.

1) My eyes start sliding over elementary mistakes that fresher proof-reading eyes would have picked up. Missing words in sentences, such as 'and' and 'the' get unnoticed. I'm so familiar with the work that I skim read the sentence as if they're present every single time.

2) I attempt to approach my story with the eyes of a new reader, but find I anticipate each new paragraph, and have accidentally memorised hefty chunks of dialogue by heart.

3) The whole thing now seems boring, heavy-handed, predictable and stale. Common sense tries to tell me that maybe my senses are just saturated with the thing, but another niggling voice asks, "What if it really is hopeless?" At this stage you're wandering around in a fog, because objective evaluation is way in the past.

4) I've noticed signs of diminishing returns in friends too, when they say, "I can't stand the sight of this manuscript any more," especially after they've made all their editing changes.

So those are the signs that we need to stop, or least put it aside for an extended period of time if we can (although in my son's case, that was no longer an option). If we don't distance ourselves from the work at this stage, fiddling around on it even more, making little syntax changes, rubbing out exclamation marks or changing a character's word choice, is no longer helping the quality of the work. It's more like stuffing empty calories of chocolate down our throats long after we've stopped enjoying them. Recognising that critical moment is one of the challenges we all face, but I think we can do it when we get sensitive to the signs.

My son received 70% for that overnight essay, and grumbled because he was sure another lecturer he prefers would have given him at least 75. Since it was such a rush effort, I thought he should be happy with 70, and he remembered that at the start of his degree when he was less confident, he used to say he'd be relieved with anything over 50, so he agreed with me. My sister's thesis has yet to be seen, but I'm sure it'll be great.

Paula Vince is a South Australian author of contemporary, inspirational fiction. She lives in the beautiful Adelaide Hills, with its four distinct seasons, and loves to use her environment as settings for her stories. Her novel, 'Picking up the Pieces' won the religious fiction section of the International Book Awards in 2011, and 'Best Forgotten' was winner of the CALEB prize the same year. She is also one of the four authors of 'The Greenfield Legacy', Australia's first and only collaborated Christian novel. Her most recent novel, 'Imogen's Chance' was published April 2014. 

NaNo Lessons

So what makes the first of December special? For some it’s time to put up the tree with less than four weeks to Christmas. For some it’s the start of school holidays (at least in Australia). For others, it signals time has run out to validate one’s NaNoWriMo total or to celebrate a win.

Whether you’ve ever done NaNo or not, I think it can teach lessons we can all benefit from:

1.  It pays to make concrete goals with build-in rewards.

I work well to deadlines. I like a challenge – it gives me something solid to work towards. Of course, I can set myself private challenges – and I do – but there is extra motivation with an external challenge with outside accountability. I can’t move the goal posts without someone else knowing I’ve done so.  There are other people cheering me on (and I them), other people ready to celebrate my wins, commiserate my losses.

Whether they are external or private, it’s good to set achievable and challenging goals. Just speaking something aloud can make it more real.  Could be looking yourself in the mirror and say ‘I’m a writer’ or writing down concrete goals for 2017. Perhaps, it’s allotting yourself a treat when you reach certain milestones – like finishing a chapter or plotting an outline.

2. Regular writing discipline helps with flow.

Maybe it’s something of a cliché to say that writers write every day – after all, sometimes life makes other demands, or maybe we need to edit, submit manuscripts and/or market published works – or do the accounts.   Still, what I’ve discovered with NaNoWriMo is that when I do write every day or close to it, after the first few days my writing generally comes easier, I get a bitter grip on my story, I begin to experience ‘flow’ (being in the creative writing zone).

If we only sit down and write when the muse strikes, our output can be irregular and patchy, our muse can be skittish. If we sit down and write anyway, we often pique her curiosity and after a while, somewhat sheepishly, she peeks over our shoulder and joins in the fun. And even if what we wrote initially is chaff (it often isn’t), we can always edit it later – but we can’t edit a blank page.

3. Remember which hat you are wearing.

As writers, we have a writerly and readerly self – or to put it in less academic terms – there is our creative internal writer and our more critical internal editor. If you are anything like me, your internal editor tends to correct and delete as you are writing – and sometimes it might take hours to write a single perfect sentence. It’s good to strive for perfection but the trouble is that your internal editor’s steely eyes can crush creativity or the intuitive leaps needed for great writing. Sometimes it's better to write first, edit later.

NaNo has given me wonderful practice of giving my internal editor a well-deserved holiday, leaving every word on the page (they all count towards the total, right) and coming back later (in December) with the red pen and delete button.  This helps with both creatively and productivity – after all, that one perfect sentence may grace an unnecessary scene and end up in the outtake bucket.

4. Starting is more important than finishing.

Fifty thousand words can seem daunting and not everyone makes goal (perhaps that’s one of the reasons I like CampNaNo as the goal is more flexible). What if I ‘only’ make 40,000 or 30,000 or even 10,000?  I’ve still got way more words than I might have written. But more than that, I’ve found that NaNo has made me more productive in non-NaNoWriMo months as well because it encourages practices like goal setting, discipline and giving my internal editor a temporary holiday.

5. The first draft is just the beginning.

And the last thing is to remember that a NaNoWriMo draft is a first draft.

As Shannon Hale said ‘I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.'

If you haven’t tried NaNoWriMo before – may I suggest you join in one of the Camps next year in April or July.  And here are some other fun ways to add external accountability:

• Month of Poetry – the last few Januarys, I’ve joined with a group of other poetic types to write a poem a day for a month - originally convened by Kat Apel, now a Facebook group.
• The Picture Book Challenge like PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month)
• Monday Writing Sprint – a smallish Facebook group that set aside Monday mornings (about 9am) to sprint (could be stories, poems, blogs, even marketing copy).
• Chorewars – Order of the Traveling Pen –allows you to record 'chores' (like brainstorming, outlining, writing, revising, marketing etc) for experience points, virtual gold & virtual goodies, compete with your fellow travelers and defeat the occasional head-hopping or plot hole monsters.
• Write Every Day Over a Year challenge – a Facebook group committing to write something (even if it’s a paragraph) every day in 2017 

And there are challenges for Readers -  like the Popsugar Reading Challenge J

Wishing you the best on your writing and reading journeys. This is the last official NaNo post for me. Over and out.

P.S. What challenges and groups have you found useful to keep you on track?

For more on NaNoWriMo check out NaNo Rerun.

Image courtesy of tratong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Jeanette O’Hagan first started spinning tales in the world of Nardva at the age of nine. She enjoys writing fiction, poetry, blogging and editing.

Jeanette is writing her Akrad’s Legacy Series—a Young Adult secondary world fantasy fiction with adventure, courtly intrigue and romantic elements. She recently launched Heart of the Mountain: a short novella and The Herbalist's Daughter: a short story. Other short stories and poems are published in a number of anthologies including Glimpses of Light, Another Time Another Place and Like a Girl.

Jeanette has practised medicine, studied communication, history, theology and, more recently, a Master of Arts (Writing). She loves reading, painting, travel, catching up for coffee with friends, pondering the meaning of life and communicating God’s great love. She lives in Brisbane with her husband and children.

You can find her at her Facebook Page or at Goodreads or on Amazon or on her websites  JennysThread.com or Jeanette O'Hagan Writes .