Bird by Bird - by Anne Lamott
ISBN: 0385480016Date read: 2013-11-11
How strongly I recommend it: 1/10
(See my list of 360+ books, for more.)
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So many people love this book, but it just wasn't my style. Aiming to be funny and describing a crazy mindset, but I couldn't relate to either. Mostly about writing novels.
my notes
Writing motivates you to look closely at life.
Do it every day. Do it as you would do scales on the piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honor. And make a commitment to finishing things.
Take people out of themselves and then back to themselves.
Good writing is about telling the truth.
Anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for life.
Sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively.
All I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame.
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.
A person’s faults are largely what make him or her likable. They shouldn’t be too perfect; perfect means shallow and unreal and fatally uninteresting. I like for them to have a nice sick sense of humor.
The writer is a person who is standing apart.
“A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost.” - Henry James