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Title: Bird by Bird : Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott ISBN: 0-385-48001-6 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 September, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.47 (191 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Caught in Lamott's witty spell
Comment: Anne Lamott writes more eloquently than most on the trauma of writer's block. When a professor of mine spoke highly of BIRD BY BIRD, knowing I was studying flow for my own (subsequently bestselling) book WRITING IN FLOW, I was prepared to dislike it. After all, Lamott's novels are hardly famous, and the book she did begin to get known for is a memoir of the first year of her son's life. Since I started and stopped something similar, I was jealous.
But then I fell under her spell. Bird by Bird is a very funny book, and most of the humor is the endearingly self-deprecating kind. Besides, Lamott speaks openly of her own jealousy of any writer friend who is slightly more successful at the moment than she is. I'm a sucker for honesty.
Don't read this book to be entertained however. Read it to find out something about designing a plot, creating characters, and writing dialogue. Read it to find out how good writing happens. According to Lamott, it happens when "you sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your subconscious to kick in for you creatively." The honest part comes you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child."
This quick-reading book is filled with fresh anecdotes, personal revelations, and practical tips about taking notes, writing groups, and who should read your drafts. You complete it all in a rush ending with the reassuring sense that regular people, like the author and yourself, if you work harder than you expected to have to, can produce something very good. And although Lamott mainly writes about her own individual experiences, her insights and advice coincide nicely with what I found to be true by interviewing 76 top novelists and poets for my WRITING IN FLOW.
Rating: 5
Summary: Every Meet Someone As Crazy As Yourself?
Comment: Reading Anne Lamott is like sitting down with a close friend who
shares all of your idiosyncracies and insanities, as well as your
warped sense of humor. Bird by Bird gives Lamott's view of the
writing life and confronts all of the little details and major crises
faced by anyone who's ever wanted to write. Filled with warm and
witty anecdotes from her own writing career and from the classes
she teaches, Lamott takes you gently by the hand and then
proceeds to push, pull, or drag you to the pencil or the keyboard
because you suddenly feel that you have to write something, right
now! This is a book to keep next to the bed or the computer, or
wherever else you're likely to be when you need a nudge to keep
going and a major dose of inspiration. Read this book with a
highlighter grasped tightly in your sweaty palm, because you're going
to want to come back to certain lines over and over again. Highly
recommended.
Rating: 3
Summary: Not exactly universal
Comment: I recognize that Lamott, unlike me, is a published author, so I hardly have the right to critique her methods. As an aspiring author, though (presumably the target market for this book), I think the fact that I found it irritating and unhelpful does have some significance for other perspective buyers.
Someone once said that an author is someone for whom 'writing is more difficult than it is for other people.' I don't neccesarily agree with that, but Lamott obviously does. About half of the time, when she talks about writer's block or issues related to writer's block (how to start yourself on the path to a succesful work of fiction), she makes it sound like writing a decent paragraph on the first try is something that happens about as often as God cures you of blindness. She has all kinds of suggestions for how to essentially trick yourself into writing. I always assumed that being good at something meant that you could actually do it...again, I realize how singularly this is my opinion, but if writing fiction is that hard, maybe your talent is for something else.
The other approximate half of the book consists of more practical advice about style, plot and character, a lot of which is practical, some of which tends toward the obvious. Its best feature is Lamott's comic style, which is really ingenious at times, but I would still say that this book is probably of more of interest to casual literature students than to people seriously considering a career as a novelist.
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Title: Traveling Mercies : Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott ISBN: 0385496095 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 15 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg ISBN: 0877733759 Publisher: Shambhala Pub. Date: 12 October, 1986 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lamott ISBN: 044990928X Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 12 April, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: On Writing by Stephen King ISBN: 0743455967 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Hard Laughter : A Novel by Anne Lamott ISBN: 0865472807 Publisher: North Point Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1979 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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