Book Notes – In this series, I share my insights, ideas, and reviews of my favourite books, whose topics are wide-ranging.
Rating – 8.5/10
Amazon Link – Bird by Bird – Amazon.in
Insights and Review
You know when a book sparkles with personality? When you feel like you’re talking to an old friend right after the first chapter? That is the hallmark of great writing, and that’s both what you see and learn about in this banger book by Anne Lamott.
I picked it up because I wanted to improve my writing, and sure, I noticed an improvement in my style. But who would have thought that a book intended to “teach” you something, that you could end it feeling sad that it’s over. Maybe it’s just my trauma from school, but I never thought the words “instructive” and “fun” could be in the same sentence.
Yet it is precisely these two words I’d pick to describe this book.
The title is intriguing, if not misleading. I’ve tried recommending it to many friends, who simply say, “Ishan, not another wildlife book, please!”. They don’t believe me when I say that the birds are metaphorical for words, that this is a book about writing and life. Coming from me and its title, it sounds like a bird book, and no one takes my recommendation as a result. My friends are tired of my wildlife book recommendations. Maybe that’s just my problem, though.
The story behind the title is intriguing enough. It refers to a childhood story of Lamott, where her brother remembers the night before the deadline that he had a school report on birds due (haven’t we all done this at some point?) He was paralysed by the enormity of the task ahead when their father sat beside him and told him to take the project “bird by bird”.
You probably see the “birds as words” analogy now. Don’t let its simplicity fool you; this is one of the core tenets of writing. Putting one word after another, trusting that they will all string together. It is the only weapon against the daunting blank page, the bane of many writers.
But the book must have more advice than just putting one word after the other, right? Of course, but it all stems from this one principle. For all writing advice is a folly when there is no writing in the first place.
Assuming you have put a few words down, you’ll probably look back and see that you’ve written a whole lot of rubbish. That would be your “shitty first draft”, and it’s the cornerstone of any creative pursuit. Shitty first drafts—gosh, that’s an ugly-sounding term. But perhaps that’s the intention. It refers to the creative vomit you put down and then sculpted into something beautiful. Okay, maybe vomit wasn’t the best word choice here. But you get what I mean.
And so the book goes on, seamlessly weaving in critical aspects of writing—plot, dialogue, character and so on. But she makes one thing clear: writing is not for everyone. It is for a certain kind of person. I’d add only one thing to this—try it. Try writing. Even if it’s for one month. Or even a week. Maybe just a page? Try writing about anything you want. For me, writing has forced me to formulate the words ricocheting in my head into something legible. That has proven innumerably useful in my life. Writing those instances here would just be a waste of space. You’ll have to trust me on this; the skill of writing permeates all.
Of course, as is the nature of an instructive book, not all chapters appeared helpful to me. But that’s beautiful in its own way; someone’s advice might appear nonsensical to you. It’s about taking what works for you.
Or maybe you decide not to follow any of the advice at all. You will still emerge as a better writer after reading this book.
Still don’t believe me? Read the book, and then let’s chat.
Favourite Quotes
This is one of my most highlighted books. I can’t include everything here, so here’s just a tasty sample.
“Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong.”
“Every morning, no matter how late he had been up, my father rose at 5:30, went to his study, wrote for a couple of hours, made us all breakfast, read the paper with my mother, and then went back to work for the rest of the morning. Many years passed before I realized that he did this by choice, for a living, and that he was not unemployed or mentally ill”
“You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. . . . You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file. . . . You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child.”
“I understood immediately the thrill of seeing oneself in print. It provides some sort of primal verification: you are in print; therefore you exist. Who knows what this urge is all about, to appear somewhere outside yourself, instead of feeling stuck inside your muddled but stroboscopic mind, peering out like a little undersea animal—a spiny blenny, for instance—from inside your tiny cave? Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere. While others who have something to say or who want to be effectual, like musicians or baseball players or politicians, have to get out there in front of people, writers, who tend to be shy, get to stay home and still be public. There are many obvious advantages to this. You don’t have to dress up, for instance, and you can’t hear them boo you right away.”
“I took notes on the people around me, in my town, in my family, in my memory. I took notes on my own state of mind, my grandiosity, the low self-esteem. I wrote down the funny stuff I overheard. I learned to be like a ship’s rat, veined ears trembling, and I learned to scribble it all down.”
“And then tell my students that the odds of their getting published and of it bringing them financial security, peace of mind, and even joy are probably not that great. Ruin, hysteria, bad skin, unsightly tics, ugly financial problems, maybe; but probably not peace of mind”
“good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little.”
“Flannery O’Connor said that anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life”
“My son, Sam, at three and a half, had these keys to a set of plastic handcuffs, and one morning he intentionally locked himself out of the house. I was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper when I heard him stick his plastic keys into the doorknob and try to open the door. Then I heard him say, “Oh, shit.” My whole face widened, like the guy in Edvard Munch’s Scream. After a moment I got up and opened the front door.
“Honey,” I said, “what’d you just say?”
“I said, ’Oh, shit,’ ” he said.
“But, honey, that’s a naughty word. Both of us have absolutely got to stop using it. Okay?”
He hung his head for a moment, nodded, and said, “Okay, Mom.” Then he leaned forward and said confidentially, “But I’ll tell you why I said ’shit.’ ” I said Okay, and he said, “Because of the fucking keys!” “
“Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who aren’t there. I walk along defending myself to people, or exchanging repartee with them, or rationalizing my behavior, or seducing them with gossip, or pretending I’m on their TV talk show or whatever. I speed or run an aging yellow light or don’t come to a full stop, and one nanosecond later am explaining to imaginary cops exactly why I had to do what I did, or insisting that I did not in fact do it.”
“The word block suggests that you are constipated or stuck, when the truth is that you’re empty.”
