Book Review: Bird by Bird

It has been over a month or two since I have finished any book my hands have touched,

not counting novels the children and I are reading for school.

So it is with great enthusiasm that I announce,

I have finally completed Anne Lamott’s

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

This was a book that everyone in the world seemed to know about except me.

And when I was amongst writing folk and mentioned that I had never read this work,

I was treated as if I earned my degree from Sears Roebuck or from a dude named Cappy’s.

After cracking this book open and spending the past few months slowly digesting Lamott’s bits of wit, wisdom and occasional inappropriate language,

I understand why I was ostracized for not reading this sooner.

I have long enjoyed Anne Lamott.

I read her Traveling Mercies many years ago and loved her sincerity and her quest for bringing redemption out of rubbish.

Bird by Bird is first a writing manual, but it would be a shame if only people who thought they were writers ever picked up this book.

I have this little habit with books that I purchase and never plan on reselling.

When I find a passage I like or a phrase I need to embed in my brain, I turn up the bottom corner of the page.

On this book,

I was often forced to turn down both corners

and I think the book is thicker by about an inch from all the up-turned pages.

This book reminded me that publication is not the best reason to write.

And I forget that sometimes when I just want to know that someone, anyone, is reading.

When I forget about the process and long for the legitimization that being published brings.

Anne Lamott’s writing brings me back to the truth –

the basis of why I pick up a pen or sit down at a keyboard.

And it is always about so much more than the end product, the final draft, the pretty paragraphs.

Writing is about the sitting down.

The pouring forth.

The making sense of the What Is and the What Might Be and the What Can Never Be.

And I probably already knew that.

But Bird by Bird reminded me again.

The book is bursting with simple advice and real world wisdom about the craft of writing.

Which is why I won’t be reselling this one.

I’ll be placing it on the top shelf of the left hand book case.

The shelf that denotes that I will be reading this work again.

And again.