Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life Paperback – Picture Book, September 1, 1995
by Anne Lamott (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars 6,423 ratings
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An essential volume for generations of writers young and old. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this modern classic will continue to spark creative minds for years to come. Anne Lamott is "a warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer’s world and its treacherous swamps" (Los Angeles Times).
“Superb writing advice…. Hilarious, helpful, and provocative.” —The New York Times Book Review
For a quarter century, more than a million readers—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne’s father—also a writer—in the iconic passage that gives the book its title:
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It 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 on 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.’”
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256 pages
Popular Highlights in this book
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.
Highlighted by 6,133 Kindle readers
One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.
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She said that sometimes she uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Think you've got a book inside of you? Anne Lamott isn't afraid to help you let it out. She'll help you find your passion and your voice, beginning from the first really crummy draft to the peculiar letdown of publication. Readers will be reminded of the energizing books of writer Natalie Goldberg and will be seduced by Lamott's witty take on the reality of a writer's life, which has little to do with literary parties and a lot to do with jealousy, writer's block and going for broke with each paragraph. Marvelously wise and best of all, great reading.
Review
“Superb writing advice. . . . Hilarious, helpful, and provocative.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“A warm, generous, and hilarious guide through the writer’s world and its treacherous swamps.”
—Los Angeles Times
“One of the funniest books on writing ever published.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“A gift to all of us mortals who write or ever wanted to write. . . . Sidesplittingly funny, patiently wise and alternately cranky and kind—a reveille to get off our duffs and start writing now, while we still can.”
—Seattle Times
“Bird by Bird would be worth reading just for Lamott’s ele- gant, moving, and often-hilarious prose. But the advice she offers is just as fantastic as the style with which it’s delivered.”
—Forbes
“Anne Lamott understands better than anyone that writers need help. . . . She writes so well, in fact, that it’s hard to believe that she, too, has trouble with writing. That’s what’s so deeply comforting about this book.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Deftly and honestly explores the mental challenges of being a writer. . . . Lamott’s advice is, simply put, invaluable.”
—Bustle
“[Lamott] uses her writing exercises or lessons as a way to help us more deeply understand ourselves and the human condition in all its messiness. If you’re looking for sense-making and meaning during this deeply destabilizing time, this book is timeless.”
—Elise Hu, TED Talks Daily
“Delight[s] with insight and descriptive acumen. This humorous, insightful, no-nonsense approach will remind novices why they are writing.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Offers unique inspiration. . . . An honest appraisal of what it takes to be a writer and why it matters so much.”
—Library Journal
Customer Reviews: 4.6 out of 5 stars 6,423 ratings
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Anne Lamott
Anne Lamott is the New York Times bestselling author of Help, Thanks, Wow; Small Victories; Stitches; Some Assembly Required; Grace (Eventually); Plan B; Traveling Mercies; Bird by Bird; Operating Instructions, and the forthcoming Hallelujah Anyway. She is also the author of several novels, including Imperfect Birds and Rosie. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California.
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Top reviews from the United States
MavenofMayhem
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Condition & Signed!!
Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2023
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Listed as 'Very Good' but arrived in Like New excellent condition. Shipped with other books so no problems there. Has slight coloring around the edges of all pages inside, and multiple stickers on the back cover but easily removed. I thought it was a little overpriced for a book published October 1995 and marked "$3.99" on the back, until i thumbed through it and discover Ann's signature on the fly leaf page! VERY pleasantly surprised and happy with my purchase from this seller.
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edsetiadi
4.0 out of 5 stars This is as close as it gets to a philosophy on writing
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2021
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This is a brutally honest account of someone who lives and breathes writing. It is part autobiography and part lessons on how to become a writer, by an established writer who actually teaches a writing class. “One of the things that happens when you give yourself permission to start writing is that you start thinking like a writer”, Anne Lamott says. “You start seeing everything as material.”
And how to process that material is the absolute gem of this book, gem that has helped numerous writers along the years, gem that has made this book a go-to reference for writing even 25th anniversary edition later.
The first advice from her to the students is to write on, write everything from scratch, let it all out without worrying about structure, grammar, or even plot (that’s for phase 2, the editing part). The first draft of everything is shitty, as they say, and according to Lamott that’s part of the important process where ideas sporadically appear in our mind, and we write them all down in a messy first draft. This is why she puts notebooks in every room in her house, she even bring with her a notepad and a pen when walking the dog, so that any thoughts and ideas that spring up in her mind can be quickly jotted down and will not disappear.
Lamott then elaborate that we should not worry about perfection, because being a perfectionist prevents us for writing the first shitty draft in the first place, it puts so much pressure on us to produce them perfectly right from the start, which is impossible.
Which brings us to the next lesson. “Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop”, Lamott says. “You can’t - and, in fact, you’re not supposed to - know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing. First you just point at what has your attention and take the picture.” Indeed, we could not have had any clue of what the story would look like when we first started, we just knew that there was something about this particular material that compelled us, and we stayed with it and focus on it long enough for it to show us what it was about.
And when the story has started to flow, nothing holds a story together better than a likeable narrator. As Lamott remarks, “If your narrator is someone whose take on things fascinates you, it isn’t really going to matter if nothing much happens for a long time. I could watch John Cleese or Anthony Hopkins do dishes for about an hour without needing much else to happen. Having a likable narrator is like having a great friend whose company you love, whose mind you love to pick, whose running commentary totally holds your attention, who makes you laugh out loud, whose lines you always want to steal.”
Lamott then spend the majority of the book providing beautifully written stories from her own life and her students’ life to illustrate what happens with the writing process in the real world. How mistakes were made and corrected, how forming a writing partnership can works wonder, and how the odds of our materials getting published is not really favourable, but why it does not really that matter.
Because one thing that I noticed about her writing class is that all the habits, tools, mentality, and attitude on writing are also good tools for approaching life in general. And in this sense, writing is almost therapeutical or can serve as a good habit for life, regardless of the result of the craft.
Perhaps the best analogy of her approach on writing and how to live our lives comes in the story of the origin of the title of this book: “Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written 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 on 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.””
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Ken Goldstein
5.0 out of 5 stars As Much About Life As Writing
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2011
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Anne Lamott is not a cheerleader, more like the Burgess Meredith with the water bottle and bucket in Rocky's corner between rounds -- I'm also guessing she wouldn't wilt if she had to slash your eye open if like Rocky it got sealed shut. She knows you are going to get hit hard, and she reminds you that you know it too. She tells you not to get distracted by that which doesn't matter to the process of writing. Much of this she learned from her father, who was also a career writer. He taught her it was the doing that mattered, not the surrounding mechanical functions that seem like they matter.
What struck me repeatedly in Lamott's mini-lessons was her deep understanding of process -- that output of a work is not so much the full work itself, but an assembly of building blocks, one at a time, each a commitment, and only in totality something more. She does not advocate bonehead process or ridiculous formulaic mandate - this is not a how-to manual -- she just wants us to care about what we are doing and accomplish it in a series of heartfelt steps. There are no shortcuts, it's a little more each day, a continuum that adds up to a satisfying and cohesive whole. This is not breakthrough thinking, but it's a lesson we need to learn over and over, and it's not just about writing. Creative process is the heart of innovation. Think of all the elements that make the iPad great. If all the elements weren't great, it would not be great. Same with a restaurant menu and wine list. Same with an office skyscraper or memorial monument. Same with a short story, same with a novel. Summary impression rests in the details, all the many tiny parts or moments -- and all those details require hard thought and careful design.
Lamott is smart about this, she tells you that getting it right is not going to happen out of the gate and unnerving strides at perfection can be your worst enemy. She has an excellent descriptor for the real quality of the first drafts to which we aspire. I'll let you discover that on your own so the word does not get scraped here. Her point is, just get the words out, work on making them better later, a layer at a time.
She also allows us not to obsess unnecessarily with locking the full road map before we explore, because again that can impede our work. How far do we need to see ahead? "About two or three feet ahead of you" is plenty she tell us, quoting E.L. Doctorow: "..writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." She says this is "right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard." I tend to agree.
There is tremendous empathy in Lamott's world view, she offers a sense of shared experience that is reinforcing and comforting. Lamott talks about the imaginary radio station playing in your head -- another colorful descriptor I will let you discover -- that tells us over and over again why we can't do something, why the work we are doing is neither good nor worth doing. Learning to turn off that radio is our key to moving forward, we all hear it from time to time, but when it becomes perpetual, that is when our ability to create interesting work stops completely.
Lamott is just so honest and clear about all the factors that stop us from moving forward because she not only has experienced them, she continues to experience them. She does not position herself as a guru or weekend seminar success evangelist, but simply as someone who can reflect on problems of creativity because she deals with problems of creativity endlessly in her own life. She is even more honest in telling us that no one can make these problems go away once and for all, certainly not with any form of temporal success. All we can do is know that these obstructions will always be there, so we must embrace confronting them. Sometimes it really is good to know that none of us are experiencing roadblocks on our own, the fact that someone like Lamott tells you she is experiencing what you are experiencing is precisely the empathy that builds strength and resistance because the experiences are shared, bad and good. Her humility is reinforcing and refreshing and uncompromisingly inspiring.
"Bird by Bird" is not a long book, it can be read if you wish initially in a single sitting, but it is the kind of book you will find yourself coming back to for this chapter or that, this phrase or that. Lamott writes with good humor, even when she tackles very difficult and personal matters of her own life and those around her. The more I think about her framework, the more I am convinced it is much more broadly applicable then perhaps she even considered. I see the guidance as useful in company life, in financial life, in family life, in political life, and in government life. All of these require effective process to get them right, there are no shortcuts, and the rewards can be the smallest where the challenges are the greatest. That does not mean the rewards aren't meaningful, but it is the context of those rewards and the expectations that one sets for success that truly inform us when we are steering toward a final draft.
Review excerpted from my blog:
[...]
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TillynWilf
3.0 out of 5 stars Average
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 17, 2019
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I didn't enjoy this book - it does give some good tips on writing but I found the padding around the tips to be tedious. I found myself thinking 'am I missing the point somewhere if this is a best seller?' The hype hasn't lived up to the content for me.. disappointed.
13 people found this helpful
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Ian J. Pople
3.0 out of 5 stars Anne Lamott has an easy, humorous and conversational style of writing which results ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2018
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This Is as much a memoir as a book on how to write successfully. Anne Lamott has an easy, humorous and conversational style of writing which results in an engaging read. The one big put off though is the overuse of her belief in god which just didn’t sit well with me.
22 people found this helpful
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VenkyIyer58
5.0 out of 5 stars Review of the book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
Reviewed in India on January 16, 2018
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How good is this book?
Well, I am writing this review after a second back-to-back read.
It’s that good. It is one of the best books for authors by an author I have ever read, and I say that even though there are about a zillion books for authors by authors I still have to catch up on.
This book isn’t about getting your use of the apostrophe right, or about avoiding dangling participles. This book is about perfectionism, about school lunches, about dialogues and about broccoli.
It is about writing, not eating, and I highly recommend you read the book if you want to know (and learn from knowing) what school lunches and broccoli have to do with authorship.
This book is about dealing with the vulnerabilities of authors by an author who has dealt with the vulnerabilities of being an author and has prevailed, if that easy, humorous writing style is anything to go by.
And this book is a superb example of how to do storytelling right in a non-fiction book.
This book is a kind of bible on the other category of abilities an author needs, the kind of abilities of the mind and spirit you won't find described in grammar books and books on craftsmanship.
I have this feeling I will be reading it again. Seems broccoli is good for you.
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53 people found this helpful
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Emma
1.0 out of 5 stars Dated and dull; there are better books out there
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 27, 2021
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Nothing new or particularly helpful in this book. The tone is a little annoying due to dated concepts and language. There are a few golden nuggets of info but not enough for me to recommend the book. I got bored and put it down about 75% of the way through, doubt I’ll finish it and can’t remember most of what it said. There are better books (and writing magazines) out there.
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Bryan3
5.0 out of 5 stars All writers should read this
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2018
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I had come to a halt in both my writing and reading, and I have Anne Lamott to thank for falling in love with both all over again. She shares so much wisdom and insight on the art of writing, that it would be impossible for you to not fall in love with the craft and find inspiration again. As well as helpful tips and advice the story is layered with touching and insightful stories that will make you laugh and then bring you round to that "a-ha" moment. I would highly recommend this to any writer or anyone who loves the art of writing.
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