How to Tell Stories: Lessons Learned from Bird by Bird

Check Out My Story!

WIth all that’s been going on, I forgot to direct you to a flash fiction piece, “Hand in Marriage,” that I had published in The Corner Club Press.  It’s on page 53-56 of Issue 5.  Check it out!

Bird by Bird

When I’m having trouble with my writing–or with my life–I reread Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott’s “instructions on writing and life.”  The title comes from a family story in which her brother, at age ten, is struggling to finish a report on birds in one night that he should have been working on for months.  Overwhelmed and frustrated, he sits at the table crying.  Lamott’s father says calmly, “Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.”

Here are some writing and life lessons I’ve learned from this must-read book.

1.  Take things bird by bird.  Let’s face it:  achieving our dreams can be terrifying.  Sometimes when I sit down to work on my novel (or when I’m on the train headed to work and haven’t written anything for several days) I become overwhelmed, and Bad Mind takes over:  You’ll never finish this.  It’s a waste of time in the first place.  You’ve only written x number of pages. But I remember:  bird by bird, and I write a word, then a sentence.  Another sentence.  A paragraph.  It’s not very romantic, but in the end, that’s how books get written.  That’s how life gets lived, too:  one moment, one choice at a time.

2.  Write shitty first drafts.  Which brings me to one of Lamott’s best pieces of advice:  it’s okay to write shitty first drafts.  She has a whole chapter devoted to this.  “All good writers write” shitty first drafts, she says.  “This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.”  Lamott says that when she used to write food reviews she’d be afraid that she would get hit by a car after writing her shitty first draft, and someone would think the accident was actually a suicide.  But in the end, it always turned out okay.

3.  You don’t have time to waste.  This moment of the book is so poignant I’ll just give it to you straight:

About a month before my friend Pammy died, she said something that may have permanently changed me.

We had gone shopping for a dress for me to wear that night to a nightclub with the man I was seeing at the time.  Pammy was in her wheelchair, wearing her Queen Mum wig, the Easy Rider look in her eyes.  I tried on a lavendar minidress, which is not my usual style.  … the dress fit perfectly, and I came out to model it for her.  I stood there feeling very shy and self-conscious and pleased.  Then I said, ‘Do you think it makes my hips look too big?’ and she said to me slowly, ‘Annie?  I really don’t think you have that kind of time.’

And I don’t think you have that kind of time either.  I don’t think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won’t be good enough at it, and I don’t think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect.

 

4. Give.  “Annie Dillard has said that day by day you must give the work before you all the best stuff you have, not saving up for later projects.  If you give freely, there will always be more” (emphasis mine).  This applies to life as well as writing.  It reminds me not to hold anything back.

5.  Have a sense of humor, for goodness sake.  I read this book whenever I’m taking my writing (or myself, for that matter) too seriously.  Lamott warns against the dangers of radio KFKD (I’ll leave you to decipher the off-color acronym), which “out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement … out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing.”  She compares finishing a novel to trying to put an octopus to bed:  one of the arms will always unleash itself from under the covers and try to grab you, but that’s okay.  She reminds us to let the Dr. Seuss character that is our subconscious play, because that’s what allows us to write.  She reminds us not to take ourselves so seriously.

Happy reading!