Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and LifeNEW 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.’” |
From inside the book
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Page vii
... Getting Started 3 / Short Assignments 16 Shitty First Drafts 21 / Perfectionism 28 School Lunches 33 / Polaroids 39 Character 44 / Plot 54 Dialogue 64 / Set Design 74 False Starts 80 / Plot Treatment 85 How Do You Know When You're Done ...
... Getting Started 3 / Short Assignments 16 Shitty First Drafts 21 / Perfectionism 28 School Lunches 33 / Polaroids 39 Character 44 / Plot 54 Dialogue 64 / Set Design 74 False Starts 80 / Plot Treatment 85 How Do You Know When You're Done ...
Page xvi
... getting teased about my strange looks for most of my life . This is a difficult country to look too different in - the United States of Ad- vertising , as Paul Krassner puts it — and if you are too skinny or too tall or dark or weird or ...
... getting teased about my strange looks for most of my life . This is a difficult country to look too different in - the United States of Ad- vertising , as Paul Krassner puts it — and if you are too skinny or too tall or dark or weird or ...
Page xxix
... , and there will be days when it feels like they have caught and are riding a wave . And then I tell my students that the odds of their getting published and of it bringing them financial security , peace xxix ntroduction.
... , and there will be days when it feels like they have caught and are riding a wave . And then I tell my students that the odds of their getting published and of it bringing them financial security , peace xxix ntroduction.
Page xxx
... getting good at it , and having books and stories and articles published , will not open the doors that most of them hope for . It will not make them well . It will not give them the feeling that the world has finally validated their ...
... getting good at it , and having books and stories and articles published , will not open the doors that most of them hope for . It will not make them well . It will not give them the feeling that the world has finally validated their ...
Page xxxi
... getting pub- lished . So that's one of the things I tell them . But I also tell them that sometimes when my writer friends are working , they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time . And sometimes when they are ...
... getting pub- lished . So that's one of the things I tell them . But I also tell them that sometimes when my writer friends are working , they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time . And sometimes when they are ...
Contents
16 | |
28 | |
School Lunches 33 Polaroids | 39 |
Dialogue 64 Set Design | 74 |
False Starts 80 Plot Treatment | 85 |
Radio Station KFKD 116Jealousy | 122 |
Index Cards 133 Calling Around | 145 |
Letters 172 Writers Block | 176 |
PUBLICATIONAND OTHER | 185 |
Writing a Present 185 Finding Your Voice | 195 |
Giving 202Publication | 208 |
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actually agent Anne Lamott Anthony Hopkins beautiful begin believe breathe called characters Demi Moore desk dialogue editor Ethan Canin everything father feel felt finally Flannery O'Connor formula fiction Frederick Buechner funny garden Gary Snyder getting give going happen head hear heart hope index cards inside keep KFKD knew listen lives look lunch mind months morning movie Natalie Goldberg night novel Okay one-inch picture frame Pammy paper parents person Phillip Lopate plot Polaroid probably published quiet remember sense Sharon Olds shitty first draft short assignment smell someone Sometimes sort stare started talk tell there's things thought tiny told truth trying turn voice waiting walking Warren Oates Wendell Berry woman wonderful words worry writer friends writing group written wrote