Bird by Bird

I first read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird—Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Pantheon Books, 1994) in February, 1999. I read it again in April, 2003. And now I'm reading it again. Besides the Bible and Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest, there are few books I have read more than once. Even if you don't write for a living, Bird by Bird is worth your time. A couple reasons why are these I read this morning:

On not needing to know the whole story before you begin . . .

E. L. Doctorow once said that "writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard. (p. 18)

On writing characters that are real—warts and all . . .

My Al-Anon friend told me about the frazzled, defeated wife of an alcoholic man who kept passing out on the front lawn in the middle of the night. The wife kept dragging him in before dawn so that the neighbors wouldn't see him, until finally an old black woman from the South came up to her one day after a meeting and said, "Honey? Leave him lay where Jesus flang him." And I am slowly, slowly in my work—and even more slowly in real life—learning to do this. (p. 46; no, "flang" is not a typo)