Anne Lamott takes it Bird by Bird

Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird is one of the most admired books about writing. We will watch a film about Anne at the Word Lover’s Retreat this coming weekend. Anne’s message is that we should become one with the writing and write what needs to be written. She says, “The good news is that some days it feels like you just have to keep getting out of your own way so that whatever it is that wants to be written can use you to write it.” Letting the characters do what they need to do and writing it truly are recurrent themes. “It is a little like when you have something difficult to discuss with someone, and as you go to do it, you hope and pray that the right words will come if only you show up and make a stab at it . . . Think of a fine painter attempting to capture an inner vision, beginning with one corner of the canvas, painting what he thinks should be there, not quite pulling it off, covering it over with white paint, and trying again, each time finding out what his painting isn’t, until finally he finds out what it is.” We are not the creator of the story, we’re just the conduits. The Truth wants to be expressed. Choose your words so someone else will read it and think they never thought of it that way before, but what is said is the truth they didn’t know they were missing. We find the truth, in our own plodding way, bird by bird.